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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Slielf_^3Ar.__ 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




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5i 



The Cruise of a Land -Yacht 




BY y 

SYLVESTER BAXTER 



ILLUSTRATED BY 

L. J. BRIDGMAN 



\\% :l 1B91 



r^y^y 



r 



JBoston 



THE AUTHORS' MUTUAL PUBLISHING COMPiVNY 
1891 



Copyright, 1890, 

BY 

Sylvester Baxter, 
.B35 



A. J. PHILPOTT & CO. 

PRINTERS 
B4 PEARL ST., BOSTON 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

TALKING IT OVER. 

CHAPTER II. 

THE ARIADNE. . . • • • 

CHAPTER III. 

UNDER WAY. 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE FIRST OP THE CRUISE BY DAYLIGHT. . 

CHAPTER V. 

IN THE HEART OP THE CONTINENT. 

CHAPTER YI. 

OVER PRAIRIES AND PLAINS. 

CHAPTER YII. 

WITH PROW TURNED SOUTHWARD. . 

CHAPTER VIII. 

ON THE FRONTIER, TO AND FRO. 

CHAPTER IX. 

IN A FOREIGN LAND 



• • 



• • • 



• • • 



• • 



25 



34 



43 



52 



67 



82 



96 



iv CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER X. 

ACROSS THE TROPIC OF CANCER. 105 

CHAPTER XL 

A SUMMER AFTERNOON IN JANUARY. 119 

CHAPTER XII. 

IN THE CITY OF THE AZTECS 137 

CHAPTER XIII. 

RIDING HORSEBACK IN THE SUBURBS OF MEXICO 156 

CHAPTER XIV. 

FROM HARRY MARSDEN IN MEXICO TO DAN MATTHEWS IN BOSTON. 177 

CHAPTER XV. 

EXTRACTS FROM THE LOG OF THE ARIADNE 194 

CHAPTER XVI. 

TREASURE-YIELDING GUANAJUATO AND SAINT LOUIS OF 

THE TREASURE. ...... 210 

CHAPTER XVII. 

DOWN AMONG TROPICAL MARVELS 222 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

A VISIT TO ANCIENT RUINS. — AT TAMPICO 242 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE BRIDGE OF GOD. ..... 



257 



The Cruise of a Lakd -Yacht. 



CHAPTER I. 



TALKING IT OVER, 




ARRY, how would you like to go 
off on a good yachting-trip ? " 

It was Harry's father who 
asked the question. They had 
just sat down to dinner in their 
cosy dining-room on Newbury 
street, Boston : Mr. and Mrs. 
Marsden and their son Harry. 

Harry's eyes sparkled and his 
face flushed eagerly. " Like to 
go a-yachting ? There's only one way I'd answer a question like 
that, you know ! But how — " 

" A yachting trip at this time of year ! " Interposed his mother. 
" Why, what can you mean ? " 

Mr. Marsden leaned back and smiled, enjoying the puzzled ex- 
pressions of his wife and son. In Harry's eyes was to be seen a 
mingling of hope and incredulity. Harry had a passion for the 
water, and he owned with his friend Dan Matthews, a fine cat-boat 
which they kept at City Point and cruised about the harbor in 



2 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

nearly all summer. But now it was January, and the Brynhilda 
was lying in Lawley's yard all covered over with boards and canvas. 

" Your brother Lemuel was in town to see me at the office this 
morning," said Mr. Marsden, addressing his wife. " He is going 
South on a long yachting-trip, and he would like to take Harry 
along. I told him I would see what you thought about it." 

" Well, if the weather keeps on like this, there will be little need 
of going South. Yachting will be quite in order along the New 
England coast and I wonder Harry and Dan haven't put the Bryn- 
hilda into commission before this," said Mrs. Marsden laughingly, 
and she looked toward the open window at the end of the room. 
The air was soft and warm outside, and since the beginning of what 
ought to be winter there had been scarcely any snow or ice. 

" Uncle Lem is a white man ! " exclaimed Harry, enthusiastically. 

" I should hope so," remarked Mrs. Marsden, seriously. "He is 
your mother's own brother ! " 

Mr. Marsden laughed. " Harry picked that up from Eliot. 
' A white man ' is his pet designation for any person whom he ad- 
mires." 

" Yes, and the other day when I told him what Mrs. Nelson 
had done for the manual training school at the North End he said 
she was a regular white man ! " said Harry. 

" Well, Harry is a good sailor, and Lemuel will find him very 
useful about the yacht," remarked his mother. 

" I only wish Dan were going, too," said Harry. 

" Dan will have to be content with your letters this time," re- 
plied his father.. " By the way, Eliot is going along, though." 

" Good enough ! " cried Harry. " But he'll be awfully seasick," 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 3 

he reflected, remembering his cousin's dismal experience when he 
and Dan took him down to Marblehead one day in the Brynhilda. 

" Oh ! I'm sure he won't be this trip," said Mr. Marsden, and 
he smiled again, mysteriously. 

" Why, if Uncle Lem is going to the West Indies — or is it 
Bermuda, perhaps ? — Eliot would get turned inside out before we 
got there ! " exclaimed Harry. 

" The West Indies ? " cried Mrs. Marsden in alarm. " Merciful 
heavens, I forgot all about Cape Hatteras ! You'd have to weather 
it in midwinter and the chances are you'd all get wrecked. It's bad 
enough for steamers, but in a yacht — or is it a steam-yacht that 
Lemuel has now? I never heard anything about it before." 

" Yes, I suppose it might be called a steam-yacht," replied her 
husband. " Steam is the motive power. It's a brand new craft, 
just built specially to his order." 

" Well, I'm sorry, but if he's going to the West Indies he must 
pass Hatteras, and for all I'm accustomed to have Harry on the 
water all summer, it would worry me nearly to death to think of him 
exposed to the danger of the perpetual winter storms that rage in 
that region. No, I can never consent to Harry's going, and we 
may as well give up thinking of it first as last. For my j)art I 
don't see what ever could have put the idea into Lemuel's head. 
He is always so sensible. But to run a risk like that ! No, Harry, 
you can't go ! " 

Harry's face grew long. " But, he is not going to the West 
Indies, nor Bermuda, nor past Hatteras," said his father. " He is 
going to Mexico." 

Harry brightened up instantly on perceiving his father's reassur- 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



ing tone, but did not yet recover by a j)oint or two, to speak nauti- 
cally, the full confidence of his expectation, as he asked doubtfully : 
" But how could he get to Mexico without going first to the West 
Indies, or even past Hatteras ? " 

" Why, simply because he is not going by sea at all ; he is going 
by land ! " 

" By land? But you said it was a yachting trip ! " said Harry, 
more puzzled than ever. 

" And you just spoke of the yacht, too," added Mrs. MarSv^oU. 
" I'm sure I don't understand what you can mean ! " 

" To be sure I did ! But it is a land-yacht." And Mr. Marsden 
leaned back and laughed heartily. 

" A land-yacht ? Who ever heard of such a thing?" excl'^Wed 
his wife, still mystified. 

Harry had now fully recovered the joyful mood that his father 
had at first roused in him and his bright young eyes were dancing 
with excitement and the keenest curiosity. " But what kind of a 
thing is a land-yacht, father ? I thought I was well posted in yacht- 
ing, but this is the first time I ever heard of that sort of a craft ! " 

" You never did ? Why, the woods are full of 'em ! The 
woods, and plains, and mountains, and railroad yards ! The fleet of 
land-yachts in this country is something enormous." 

" Oh I you mean a railroad car ! " said the boy. 

" Yes, a private car." 

" But what do you mean by calling such a thing a yacht ? " 
asked Mrs. Marsden. " I thought a yacht was something that be- 
longed only in the water, like a fish. A land-fish would be a queer 
sort of thing in natural history ! " 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 5 

" I don't know about that," replied lier husband. " Haven't 
you ever heard about that strange kind of fish in BraziHan rivers 
that, at certain seasons comes out of the water, climbs trees, and 
builds its nest in them ? Just as there are sea-molluscs and land- 
molluscs, sea-crustaceans and land-crustaceans, so the genus Yacht 
has its water-species and land-species There's an ice-yacht for 
instance ! " 

" But an ice-yacht has a mast and sails," remarked Harry. 

■;, Neither a mast nor sails are essentials for a yacht, as you well 
know," explained his father. " There are steam-yachts that have 
neither. A yacht is a craft designed for pleasure, that cruises about 
wherever its owner or navigator chooses, stopping or going from 
place to place to suit his will. A private car on a railroad "answers 
chat description, and is, to all intents and ]3urposes, a yacht. It 
makes no difference whether a yacht is on wheels, and runs on a 
track, or has a keel and floats in the water Some time in the next 
century, or perhaps before the present one expires, if Mr. De Bausset 
succeeds in getting anybody to take hold of his wonderful inven- 
tion, probably the favorite form of pleasure-navigation will be yacht- 
ing" in the air." • 

" I understand now," said his wife, " and for my part I would 
prefer a land-yacht to a sea one. Now tell me about Lemuel's 
plans." 

" As I was saying, he has just had a land-yacht, or private car, 
built. It was designed to suit his ideas, and according to what he 
tells me about it, it must be a beauty. He is going to Mexico on 
his first trip and intends to spend the winter there. You know he 
dislikes our northern winter exceedingly. Madelaine is going' with 



6 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

him and the rest of the party will be made up of young folks ; 
Florence, of course — and Mabel Sampson has been invited, so that 
Florence will have a companion near her own age ; Eliot Sampson 
goes along, as you have already heard, and finally there comes 
Harry, if we decide that he can go." 

Harry turned towards his mother with a look so imploring that 
she laughed as she said, " Well, now that Hatteras is out of the 
way — " Glancing at her son's pale face she remembered what a 
picture of youthful health he had been at the end of the previous 
summer, when he began his studies again, brown as an Indian, Hthe 
and strong as a colt. — " You know the Doctor has been saying 
that it would not do for him to study any more this year — that is, 
not until the fall term begins — and that a change of climate would 
be the best thing for him. And we were talkmg of sending him 
to Florida. So this is really just the opportunity." 

Harry Marsden was seventeen years old. He was in what was 
to have been his last year in the English High School and the next 
autumn he was to enter the Institute of Technology. But this ill- 
ness had disarranged these plans. Harry's attack of the " Grippe," 
although it had not seemed severe at the tune, had left him in such 
a condition that he could not apply himself to study without serious 
exhaustion. He had been chafing under this restraint and worrying 
because the other boys would pass him by, a year ahead. There 
was one consolation though, enough of his companions were " in the 
same boat " to assure him against lonesomeness, and some of the best 
boys in the class ahead had also been set back by the epidemic, so 
that the next year they woidd, at least, not be any farther ahead of 
hmi. Dan, however, had escaped and would enter the Instiute 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



ahead of him. That was hard, when they had so long been plan- 
nino- what they would do together there, but then he knew that Dan 
would not plume himself on that account, and Harry consoled hun- 
self that he could look to his friend to " show him the ropes " when 
he got there himself. And now this chance for travel in a far and 
strange country had come and Harry began to be glad that he had 
had the " Grippe " after all ; what he would learn would be worth 
giving a year of school for, he thought. 

" Why Harry, you look so well at this moment that I don't be- 
lieve there is any need of going away for your health at all," re- 
marked his father, tempted to tease him a bit. " You may as well 
go back to school to-morrow." He smiled at the, shade of dismay 
that came over the boy's face and continued, " But I think that if 
we decided that way the disappointment might set you back so that 
we would have to let you go after all." 

" But are n't you a bit disappointed, Harry, that it is to be a 
cruise in a land-yacht, instead of by sea ? " asked his mother. 

" Not at all," he responded. " It 's about time I saw something 
more of the land. You know I have never been beyond New York 
yet. The West Indies will keep a while." 

So it 'was settled that Harry should go. " When does Lemuel's 
yacht sail? — or roll — I suppose I ought to say," asked Mrs. 
Marsden. 

" Let's see. To-day is Saturday. A week from next Tuesday, 
which will make it January 4 ; from the New York & New Eng- 
land station with the Washington Express. 



CHAPTER II. 



THE ARIADNE. 




H 



C»:'^v, 



ARRY MARSDEN'S uncle, Mr. 
Lemuel Brinkley, was a very 
wealthy gentleman. He had 
withdrawn from active business 
pursuits on reaching middle life, 
and very sensibly had determined 
to make the most of his remain- 
ing years in following the lines 
J of study and observation that most 

interested him, besides making the 
best use of his money in behalf of his fellow men that his kindly 
heart might prompt and his sagacious mind suggest. He was very 
fond of travel and a favorite project of his was to see all the inter- 
esting portions of North America that he could reach conveniently 
by railway. To this end he had had his new car built. '"In that 
way I can travel under the most favorable conditions," he said. 
" One may stop anywhere he chooses, and if there chances to be 
anything that jDarticularly interests him, and the jDlace has no ac- 
commodations for travelers, he can remain there in comfort so long 
as he wishes and see everything at leisure. To active youth a little 
hardship, discomfort and fatigue give to travel the zest of adventure 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 9 

and sometimes increase the enjoyment. But at my age, however, I 
find that the more comfortable the conditions under which I see 
things, and the less I am distracted by such annoyances as mosquitoes, 
flies, fleas, etc., uncomfortable beds and badly-cooked, indigestible 
food, the more I enjoy what I see and the more I learn from it." 

Mr. Brinkley had been to Mexico once before with a party of 
railway directors but the most of them had been in so great a hurry 
to get back to their business that he had been able to get but tan- 
talizing glimpses of the country, and so he determined to go again 
at the first good opportunity and enjoy it more thoroughly. In his 
various journeys to different parts of the country, Mr. Brinkley had 
often made use of private cars. He had been intending to buy one, 
but his experience had shown him that certain improvements might 
be made in design and construction that would materially increase 
comfort while traveling. He therefore decided to have a car built 
for himself according to his own ideas. 

The party which he made up for the first voyage was very pleas- 
antly composed. Mrs. Brinkley was as fond of travel as he was. 
His daughter Florence, recently through school, was going alono- 
for her first taste of extended travel. His nephew, Eliot Sampson, 
was a young civil engineer, about 27 years old, a graduate of the 
Institute of Technology, and had spent something like three years 
in Mexico engaged in railroad work. He was familiar with the 
country and the Spanish language. His knowledge of the points of 
interest, of the things most worth seeing and of the best means of 
seeing them, would make him an invaluable member of the party. 
Eliot's sister, Mabel, was only a year or two older than Florence, 
and had traveled extensively, both in Europe and in our own coun- 



10 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

tiy. Harry and Florence wonld thus each have sympathetic com- 
panions. Mr. Brinkley was dehghted with the idea that the young 
people were all going. He enjoyed their enjoyment of things, as 
much as he did the s.eeing- of the same thing-s himself. Their 
youthful enthusiasm, their hearty appreciation of novelties, and their 
unreserved expressions of interest and enthusiasm, gave him the 
feehng that he himself was also looking at the world with young 
eyes. 

Harry had a strong likmg for his cousin Eliot, and the two 
were together a large portion of the tune during the days before the 
date of their departure, helping each other in their preparations. 
Most of the help, to be sure, was rendered by Eliot, who advised 
Harry what he had better take or not take. " You won 't need 
any umbrella, for one thing, " said he, " for we shan 't be troubled 
by any rain in- that country. We may as well take our heavy over- 
coats to wear the first three or four days if it happens to be cold 
weather when we want to get off the train and take a constitutional, 
but at the boundary we had better send them back by express. 
You will want both thick clothing and thin clothing, for in Mexico 
it is possible to change climate three or four times in the course of 
a day's journey by rail, according to the changes in our height 
above the sea-level. Sometunes Ave may start off in the morning 
shivering in our thick clothes, with zarapes about our shoulders, 
and inside of a couple of hours we may be wishing we had nothing 
on but gossamer undershu'ts ! Take along a couple of suits of old 
clothes, and don 't wear any starched shirts on the train. You Avill 
find soft flannel shirts most comfortable under ordinary conditions, 
and silk or cheviot ones in the hot climates." 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



11 



The day set for going came at last, although it seemed to Harry- 
that it never would come. Harry had been anxious to see " the 
yacht," as they all now called it, but it did not arrive from Spring- 
field until two days before, and then he was too busy with his final 
preparations to spend any time in going to the railroad yard, where 
they were shipping the supplies for the journey and putting on the 
finishing touches. Harry drove to the station with his father and 
mother, and Dan also went along to see hmi off. As they passed 
into the train-house Harry's eyes were on the alert. " There she 
is ! " he shouted, 23ointing to the car in the rear of the Pullman 
sleepers. 




" Why, how queer she looks ! " cried Dan. 

Indeed, it was a most remarkable-looking car. Everybody in 
passing stopped to look at it. A group of railroad men was stand- 
ing by. They were inspecting it with critical eyes and pointing out 
to each other various things that struck them as decidedly new de- 
partures. 

The feature that first struck one on a]3proaching was its color, a 
soft creamy white. Harry then noted the large plate-glass windows 
that extended nearly to the floor in the rear end of the car, while 
the door itself was filled with a large single sheet of plate-glass in 



12 THE CRUISE OF A LAISTD-YAOHT. 

the same way. This feature is common to nearly all cars of the 
kind, and is designed to afford good opportunities for observation to 
those sitting within. The window-curtains both at the end and the 
sides were all down, but the door was ajar and showed that the in- 
terior was brilliantly lighted. Mr. Brinkley was standing on the 
car-platform with Eliot. He greeted them heartily and took them 
inside, where they found the ladies of the party already comfortably 
at home and chatting with some friends who had come to bid them 
good bye. A good-looking young mulatto standing by took Harry's 
hand-satchel and was about to help him off with his overcoat when 
his uncle Lemuel said : " Wait a bit ! I believe this is your famous 
fellow yachtsman, Dan, isn't it ? Well, he must be wanting to see 
what kind of a craft a land-yacht is, and we '11 look her over to- 
gether, beginning outside in regular ship fashion. So keep on your 
overcoat, Harry, for two or three minutes. We shall have plenty 
of time before we start ; it is almost half an hour yet, and so we can 
give Dan a pretty good idea of her. '' 

Mr. Brinkley seemed as delighted as a boy with the Ariadne, as 
she was called. Harry and Dan themselves could have hardly been 
more enthusiastic over the Brynhilda when they first had her. Mr. 
and Mrs. Marsden remained with the ladies, while Mr. Brinkley 
went outside with Eliot, Dan and Harry. 

The white sides of the Ariadne made a marked contrast with the 
dark Pullman just ahead. " She will attract enough attention by 
her color alone," exclaimed Harry. " I heard one of those railroad 
men say, as I came along, " She 's a regular white blackbird ! " 
What did you paint her white for. Uncle Lemuel ? " 

" For comfort," Avas the reply. " I have no desire to be conspic- 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND— YACHT. 13 

iious, but I am willing to suffer that penalty for the sake of setting 
an example that ought to be followed. White is the proper color 
for a passenger car, especially one designed for use in a warm coun- 
try. If Mr. Pullman would only make that his standard color, in- 
stead of the near approach to black that he has made the fashion, 
he would earn the thanks of thousands of travelers who are now 
half fried in consequence. Now, being good Yankee boys, I think 
you and Dan can guess the reason why white is a better color than 
black." 

" Because black absorbs heat and white reflects it, isn't it ? " said 
Harry. 

" Why, that is the reason they paint the new steel cruisers white 
instead of black ! " exclaimed Dan. " A white man-of-war would 
once have been thought ridiculous, but now it is a regulation color 
in the navy." 

" Yes, and the same ground holds good for a land-craft as for a 
water-craft," added Mr. Brinkley. "In Mexico particularly, and in 
our own summer weather, the difference between black and white 
will make a difference of several degrees inside a car. Do you 
know that if you take a box and line it with black and put a sheet 
of glass over it, and then put it where the summer sun will shine in- 
to it, you can cook eggs in it or heat water scalding hot ? Well, you 
produce a like effect inside a car by painting it dark." 

" I like the idea of having the car plain outside," remarked Eliot. 
" That is a sensible fashion that is spreading. Many of the rail- 
roads have adopted it, and have no more ornamental work on the 
outside of their cars than you have on this." 

"Anything that is made what is called ornamental for mere 



14 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

show, like the elaborate striping and scroll-work so long customary 
on the outside of passenger cars, is in bad taste, and the money 
spent in doing it is wasted," said his uncle. " It does not promote 
in the least the comfort or convenience of the passengers, and the 
cost of doing it had better be laid out on the inside. It is a relic of 
the stage-coaches out of which railway coaches were developed, and 
its only use is to make ignorant people stare in open-mouthed won- 
der, as they do at circus-wagons." 

" What a queer roof ! " observed Harry ; " It looks mighty 
pretty, though ! " 

" That is another new departure for the same reason — com- 
fort," explained Mr. Brinkley. " I have built the car with a double 
roof. You see the row of little windows above, along the side, and 
the spaces between them filled in with open-work ? The regular roof 
is of the Mann pattern, as they caU it, instead of the monitor. 
The curve from side to side gives the largest amount of air-space in 
the interior, as well as the simplest construction and finest appear- 
ance. The rows of dormer windows above, like those in the Boston 
& Albany drawing-room cars on the New York Limited, light the 
upper part of the car as in the ordinary monitor. Over that is a 
second roof, and the air circulating freely between, the heat from 
the sun does not beat down into the interior of the car. That will 
also make a great addition to comfort in hot weather. Now let us 
step inside. 

" I think your Aunt Maddie must be showing the others around 
ahead of us," said he as they entered and found the room empty. 
" I hear their voices out in the other part somewhere. Tliis room 
here in the rear of the car is our parlor. Here we shall sit and see 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



15 



the country as we speed through it, with fine outlooks through the 
larofe windows on either side and behind us. Or when the weather 
is all right, as it almost always is in Mexico, we can go out on the 
rear platform and get a still more extensive view. When anybody 
wants to be alone, they can withdraw to their stateroom ; that is, 
those of us who have staterooms," he added, looking at Eliot and 
Harry and laughing. ''You two boys can have the privilege of the 
dining-room for that purpose." Although Eliot was twenty-seven 
years old, Mr. Brinkley always called him a boy, as well as Harry. 

The room was a very handsome one, but simple and quiet in as- 
pect ; there was not a particle of gaudiness or glitter about it. 
Everything looked invitingly comfortable. The sides and graceful- 
ly curved ceiling were finished in light wood. At the end opposite 
the door was a desk, with a compact arrangement of an attractively 
filled book-case above, together with shelves covered with magazines 
and newspapers. Along the sides were two sofas and several broad 
easy-chairs. In a panel between two windows on one side was a 
beautiful water-color picture, and a corresponding space on the op- 
posite side was occupied by an equally beautiful etching. From the 
centre of the ceiling there hung a cluster of brilliant electric lights ; 
there was also an electric liMit on a bracket on either side of the 
desk, shaded to keep the glare from the eyes, and two similar liglits 
forming moveable brackets on either side, so that they could be 
placed in various positions for convenience in reading. Out on the 
platform there was also an electric light overhead and a red light 
on each side. " This car will usually be in the rear of the train 
and so I took care to have red electric lights for the purpose, so that 
we should not be bothered by the disagreeable smell of kerosene 



16 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

lanterns. You probably notice how light and cheerful this room 
appears. That is on account of the use of light-colored wood in the 
finish. Dark wood often looks very rich and agreeable, but a room 
so furnished requires perhaps twice as much candle-power, if not 
more, to illiTminate it as effectively as it would be with light finish. 
Now we will sro on and see the rest of our craft. Here is our state- 
room — your Aunt's and mine — adjoining the parlor." 

Passing through a door to the right of the desk, they found 
themselves in a snug compartment, with beds on either side made 
up ready for the night. The room was furnished in cheerful yellow 
tints, with which the hangings harmonized. An open door showed 
a room of the same size adjoining, beyond, and similar in appear- 
ance, with the exception that it was furnished in a pale rose-color. 
" Couleur de rose,'' said Mr. Brinkley ; " that is the way the young 
folks are expected to see things ! This room belongs to the girls, 
you know. The door here between will be closed for the trip, but 
the two rooms are made to communicate for convenience when re- 
quired." 

Harry noticed that sofas occupied the places corresponding to 
those where the beds were in the first room. " Sofas by day, beds 
by night," explained his uncle. " You see how much larger it 
makes this room look ? I had the beds made up in our room so 
that visitors might see just how things were. These two electric- 
lights in each room you notice are moveable and can be attached to 
various places on the walls, like those in the parlor at the side. For 
instance, if anybody has the pernicious habit of reading in bed they 
can gratify it with a beautiful strong light, close to the head, and 
shaded, without any heat to speak of and no danger of setting them- 




ALL ABOARD KdK MKXICo 



T *- <ij — 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 17 

selves on fire. Seriously speaking, what a convenience for an in- 
valid ! And you can have a light in any instant in the night by 
just reaching out your hand. I tell you this is an age worth living 
in ! " he exclaimed enthusiastically. 

" Now see what a nice toilet-room this is," Mr. Brinkley went 
on. " Each stateroon has one annexed. The two boys ahnost 
jumped on seeing an electric light flash up inside on opening the 
door, and Eliot laughed : " Ah, you got that idea from London, I 
see ! I saw it at the Metropole last year. We can learn a thing or 
two the other side of the water, can 't we ? in exchange for what we 
teach them !" 

" How in the world is that done ? " marveled Dan, with eyes 
still astonished. 

" Opening the door to go in completes the circuit and turns on 
the light," explained Eliot; the next time the door is opened — that 
is, to come out — it breaks the circuit and the light is turned off." 

" Here we have an extra light the other side of the looking-glass 
for use when needed. Now just see what a fine stream of water, 
either hot or cold, runs from these taps without having to work a 
pump, as on most cars. I will show you how that is done later. 
It is an idea from some of the new Pullmans. Now let us proceed 
* amidships.' " 

They went back into the parlor and forward through a narroAv 
passage-way just outside the two staterooms. This passage-way 
widened out considerably at its farther end and curved to the right, to 
make place for a compartment opposite the toilet-annex of the second 
state-room. The door of this was marked : " Toilet and Bathroom." 

" Ah, here is something for you, boys ! " said Mr. Brinkley. 



18 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

As lie opened the door there was the same arrangement of 
electrie-lisfhts as in the toilet-rooms. It was a room about the same 
width as the latter, but several feet longer. It was entirely lined 
with tiles in a Moorish style, sides, floor and ceiling ; even the in- 
side of the door was tile covered. The ceiling was arched both 
from sides and ends, making a sort of elongated dome. The glazed 
surface brightly reflected the electric-light in the centre. At the 
farther end was a large panel in relief, a beautiful group of boys 
having a merry time in the Avater. " Chelsea tiles ! " exclaimed 
Eliot. " Jack Low has fairly outdone himself here. And that 
panel is one of Osborne's best works ! " 

" America can beat the world in tiles, anyhow ! " added Mr. 
Brinkley. 

" But where is the bath-tub ? " asked Harry. 

At one end of the room were the toilet arrangements, but the 
rest of the space was empty. 

" No wonder you ask," laughed his uncle. " But on a car like 
this we have to make things compact and save all the room Ave 
can ! 

" Save room ! " called Dan, looking at the empty space ; why — " 

" Now all stand close as j)Ossible at this end, and I will shoAV 
you," said Mr. Brinkley. He turned a little wheel projecting from 
the wall and the greater part of the floor rose up, dividing in the 
middle and folding back against the wall on either side. Beneath 
was a large bath, lined with Avhite tiles. 

" What a magnificent bath ! That beats anything yet ! " and 
Harry nearly shouted with delight. " Why, I could almost swim in 
that ! " he said. 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



19 



" We shall find this one of the most comfortable features of all 
on a journey like ours," observed his uncle. 

" A bath sunk in the floor is the ideal kind," said Eliot. " It 
seems like Pompeii, and the pictures by Alma Tadema." 

" Outside of the tiling is a preparation of non-conducting mate- 
rial with a space between for the circulation of warm air to keep the 
tiles from chilling the water. You see these places of open work 
here in the wall? That is for the admission of air, as hot or cool as 
we may want it. So we can even take a good Turkish bath here. 
After the hot air we can raise the floor and take a cool plunge. 
George the porter has been a Turkish-bath assistant in New Orleans. 
Here is another ingenious contrivance. This moveable floor is 
double. Now see how, by a slight change we can have just the 
conveniences for rubbing down. As he spoke he turned the floor 
back into its place and then, turning the wheel in a reverse direc- 
tion, the tiling in the central part rose and formed a reclining-table 
about six feet long and three wide. " Then there is a shower, in the 
ceihng, and here on the side are arrangements for douche, etc. So 
we can take almost any kind of bath we like. And we can splash 
water all over this room without harming anything. WeU, now let 
us o-o on. Here is the dining-room, amidships." 

As they entered they found the rest of the party just returned 
from the forward part of the car, which they had been inspecting 
under the guidance of Mrs. Brinkley. With them were several new 
arrivals — friends who had come to see them off. " It is perfectly 
lovely ! " exclaimed one of these, a young lady who had been a 
schoolmate of Florence's. 

" Enchanting as Aladdin's palace ! " said another. " I feel just 



20 THE CRUISE OF A LAXD-YACHT. 

as I do when I go to see friends off on a steamer for Europe ! I 
want to start right off myself ! " 

" We are going to take a cup of chocolate. Will you gentle- 
men not join us ? " said Mrs. Brinkley. 

" Thank you/' repHed her husband, but we want to give this 
other young sailor here, Harry's friend, a good idea of our yacht 
first." 

The dining-room was somewhat larger than the parlor and was 
furnished m a correspondingly simple but artistic style. At one 
end was a sideboard, and at the other was an upright piano. Over 
the table there was a cluster of low-hanging electric lights, with a 
large shade of fringed silk. " I have finished this part in cherry, 
which gives the room a darker, subdued effect, which is appropriate 
for a dining-room, where it seems to increase the sociabihty of a 
meal by concentrating the light on the table. But with that cen- 
tral cluster raised to the ceihng, and with other various brackets, we 
can make the room light enough when we gather here for a musical 
evening, or any other purpose. Now we will keep on to the 'bows' 
and take a look at the ' galley ' and ' forecastle,' as you nautical young 
fellows would say." 

•As they passed forward an appetizing whiff struck theii- nostrils. 
On the left, next to the dining-room, was the pantry and china-clos- 
et, and beyond that the kitchen, where they caught a glimpse of a 
round-faced colored man, almost as black as the kettles before him, 
busy before a range, assisted by a spry boy of the same hue. 

" Well Sam," remarked Mr. Brinkley, " it smells as if there 
were no danger of your starving us ! " 

" I'm goin' to do th' best I kin, sail ! " replied the cook, his 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



21 




good-natured face illuminated with a double row of gleaming- large 
and regular teeth. 

" I 've no doubt of that, Sam. Only do not give us too much 
of your good fare." 

" I '11 try not to, sah ! " responded Sam, duti- 
fully. 

" So this is your boy Peter," said Mr. Brink- 
ley, patting the little fellow's woolly head. " He 
seems to be taking hold well. How old are you, 
Peter?" 

" Foh'teen sah ! " replied the lad, looking up 
with merry eyes and duplicating his father's grin. 

" You '11 find that boy good 's a monkey-show sometimes ; he 
jess' know's how to cut up shines ! " said Sam. 

" Well, I expect Harry and Eliot will give him a chance to let 
himself out once in a while," laughed Mr. Brinkley. " It seems a 
wonder, boys," he continued, turning to the young men, " how much 
can be done in a little place like this kitchen. But everything is 
handy, and the cook can lay his hands on almost anything he wants 
without stirring. Well, we are almost at the end of the ship I 
Here, next the kitchen, is the heater for the car. We shall hardly 
need that five or six days hence. Here on the other side are the 
berths for our ' crew ' arranged like those in a regular Pulhnan, 
upper and lower. Then we have room for several trunks, you see, 
and here in the corner is one of the most important things on board." 
Fenced off behind a railing some machinery was running in a very 
hvely manner, and Harry recognized the familiar smooth hum of 
an electric dynamo. 



22 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

" Where do you get your motive power for the dynamo, Uncle 
Lemuel ? " he asked. 

" From that little engine that seems to be a part of it. It is a 
powerful little fellow ! It runs by petroleum, which is converted 
mto gas and explodes by an electric spark. From the dynamo the 
electricity goes into a storage-battery, or accmnulator. This gives 
an extra supply sufficient to last some Httle tune when the engine is 
not running. Here is still another contrivance. You see that little 
machine beside the dynamo ? That is an air compressor, and the 
compressed air is forced into a tank underneath the floor. The 
jDressure from that air is what makes the water run with such force 
without pumping, as we have just seen. Oh ! I must tell you that 
this electricity serves another very useful purpose for us, besides 
lighting. By means of a motor, it runs a revolving fan-blower that 
brings in a plentiful supply of fresh air when needed. This aii* 
supply is conducted in pipes to any part of the car, when needed. I 
have found that one of the greatest discomforts of railway travel 
comes from the stagfnation of the air in a car when it is not in mo- 
tion ; particularly at night when it is stopping over at any place, or 
both day and night in making a stay anywhere. Sometimes I have 
felt almost stifled. That is the reason why most people want to 
leave their car at once when they get anywhere. But A\4th this 
simple convenience, if we feel the need of more air at night, all we 
have to do is just to open the tube at our bedside ; that makes an elec- 
tric connection, sets the fan in motion, and we breathe fresh air at 
once." 

Mr. Brinkley looked at his watch. " We start in about five 
minutes," he said. " Well, we have seen about everything now. 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 23 

There is considerable that we cannot see ; we have to make use of 
all available space on a car like this. So we have boxes underneath 
for storing provisions; water-tanks, oil-tanks, etc., in between the 
flooring. And lockers everywhere." 

" All that weight low down is so much ballast in the hold, I sup- 
pose," remarked Harry. 

" Yes, it gives increased stability, and makes the car run 
smoothly. Now boys, we will go back ' aft.' " 

The others were still in the dining-room. " Just a sip of choco- 
late for us, and then ' All ashore who are going ashore ! ' " said Mr. 
Brinkley. 

A moment of embraces, kisses, and farewell words; then all 
hastened to the rear door. "All aboard for Philadelphia, Balti- 
more, Washington!" called the conductor; — "and Mexico!" he 
added, with a friendly smile at the group on the rear platform. 

The stay-at-homes stepped off the car. George the porter turned 
down the hinged extensions that enlarged the platform on either 
side over the steps, and then closed the gates, converting the place into 
a sort of balcony for a safe and pleasant outlook ; the locomotiva bell 
started its departing clangor, slow and regular, and the train beoan 
to move. A waving of handkerchiefs from both sides, and Dan, sud- 
denly thrusting his hand down into his overcoat pocket, shouted in 
dismay : " Oh ! I forgot ! " Pulling out a flat package he rushed 
forward and handed it to his friend on the car : " Here Harry, take 
this along; and bring it back full ! " 

"Harry seized it and then watched the scene behind him. 
Tears came into his eyes as he saAv his parents standing there, wav- 
ing their fareweUs, and diminishing as the train receded. Then, as 



24 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



he lost them from sight he stepped inside and opened the package. 
It was a large blank-book, nicely bound. On the fly-leaf was 
inscribed, " Harry Marsden, from his friend and shipmate, Dan 
Matthews. " Next came a title-page of comical design from Dan's 
own hand. Dan was exceptionally good at caricature, and he had 
depictured Harry in the course of his journey in a series of adven- 
tures and ridiculous mishaps. Eliot, who was standing by, laughed 
heartily at sight of it. The title read : " Log of the Ariadne." 




CHAPTER III. 



UNDER WAY. 



"/^FF at last!" cried Florence, and jumping- iij) gleefully, she 
^■^^ seized Mabel and began to twirl, with a " tra-la-la-la-la- 
la-la! " until a lurch of the now rapidly-rushing train, as it rounded 
a curve, threw them off their balance and against a sofa, where they 
lay back laughing as girls can laugh. 

George appeared at the door with the words, " Supper is ready. 



sir 



. I 



Seated at the table with his friends, under the cheery light, 
and enjoying a nice, home-like meal, Harry could hardly realize that 
he was on a train, speeding along swiftly. There was but a sub- 
dued noise and a slight motion — a gentle tremor and no jolting — 
the heavy car glided along so smoothly. 

" We are going to have sujDpers and old-fashioned mid-day 
dinners, and light breakfasts, while traveling," said Mr, Brinkley. 
" We must take care not to make our meals too elaborate ; too 
many travelers commit the error of eating more than they can 
digest, with their limited opf>ortunities for exercise. With meals 
served the way Sam knows how to serve them, we shall enjoy sim- 
plicity, and get variety from day to day." 

They were all tired after their final preparations, and after 
supper Mr. Brinkley said to his nephews : 

" Now boys, you can settle yourselves for the journey. I think 



25 



26 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

you will like to take up your quarters here in the dining-room. 
These sofas at this end will be your beds at night. This part is as 
good as a sej^arate room when these curtams are drawn. The 
sofas in the parlor can be made into beds also, but I think you 
will like this better, for you have the bathroom adjoining, which 
will answer all the purposes of a private toilet-room for you two." 

" Even better," said Eliot. 

" Yes, indeed ! How jolly that will be ! " cried Harry, with 
joyous enthusiasm. 

" Here are lockers and drawers for your clothing. You can 
keep a good part of your things here, and it will be much handier 
than going to trunks and bags. This car is going to be our home 
for more than three months the greater part of the tune, and we 
want to have everything as home-like as possible." 

Shortly after nine o'clock, a yawn from Harry brought a sympa- 
thetic response in kind from Eliot, followed by a laugh and a sug- 
gestion of bed-time. They found everything made ready for the 
night by the deft hands of George : nice wide beds, with blankets 
turned down at an angle inviting repose, in the place of the sofas 
of half the breadth they had seen in their place. 

" Please put your shoes just outside the curtains, and you will 
find them in the morning all shining like Sam's face," said George, 
bidding them good night. 

Eliot, being a veteran traveler, was drawing the long, regidar 
breaths of sleep in less than a minute after his head touched the 
pillow, while Harry was kept awake by the novelty of the situation. 
But the monotonous noise of the train, and the incessant tremor, 
had the effect of a lullaby, to whose soothing influences he soon 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 27 

yielded. When the train stopped, however, he awoke at once, as he 
also did at any marked change in the character of the noise, as 
when passing over a long bridge with a hollow, rumbling sound. A 
sleeper almost always thus awakes at the cessation of accustomed 
sounds, or the occurrence of new ones, until his unconscious sense 
of hearing becomes used to it, as when a clock in the room stops 
ticking, or when it strikes the hours. When Harry awoke at such 
times, at first he could not remember where he was, and fancied 
hmiself in bed at home, until he gradually recalled the events of 
the day before. Then he would lift the curtain of the window close 
to his head, and peer curiously out through the clear plate glass for 
a moment. One time he would note the shadowy trees and bushes 
flitting swiftly, dimly by, and dark streams under the stars slip- 
ping away for a brief space through the bare, winter landscape, 
snowless and iceless. Again he would see the bright whiteness of 
the electric lights of some large town, and while the train was stand- 
ing motionless at a station the cessation of the constant, uniform 
sounds would make the noises made by the banging of baggage, the 
rattling of trucks over the station platform, the hurry of feet out- 
side, the cries and signals of train men, all the more striking in 
relief against the silence. All trifles hke these had the fascination 
of a new experience for the young traveler, and therefore stamped 
themselves vividly upon his keen senses ; but in two or three days 
more he would cease to note them, and would sleep as soundly 
through them all as his cousin was sleeping that night. 

It was far into the night when he was aroused by an unusual 
clanking and uncoupling of cars, a puffing of locomotives, a switch- 
ing to and fro, a brief interval of rumbling somehow diiferent from 



28 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

the sound of going over a bridge, and then silence perhaps for a 
minute, followed by a slowly recurrent thump swish, thump swish, 
thump swish of heavy machinery. He could see nothing through 
the window, for the car lay close to some wall, or other opaque 
object. So he could not forbear turning on the light at his side, 
slipping on his trousers and coat over his night-shirt, wrapping him- 
self in his ulster, and thus, half-dressed, going out onto the rear 
platform to look. He saw an expanse of water behind, with a 
foaming, undulating track of vague whiteness dividing the dark 
surface. He knew that they must be crossing the Hudson, on the 
great railway ferryboat, from Fishkill to Newberg, for he had been 
closely studying the maps of the route for several days. He stepped 
down to the deck and looked around. The train was divided into 
two sections, occupying the double track on the boat. Harry 
looked up at the tall smokestack, with a trail of black streaming 
out from the top and sinking slowly down towards the water m the 
quiet air. Then he looked off and saw the huge, dark bulks of 
the grand highlands of the Hudson looming up from the river, in- 
distinguishable from their reflections below. At last, after peer- 
ing into the engine-room for a moment, and watching the great 
machinery do its powerful work, he went softly back into the car 
and was soon asleep again. 

It was some hours before daylight when the train came to a stop 
which lasted so long that it was evident that they were at the end 
of the first stage of their journey, whereupon Harry fell into a 
sleep that was not broken until he was suddenly aroused by finding 
his face covered by some large, soft object that had descended 
violently upon liis head. He pushed it away with his hands, and 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 29 

heard a hearty laugh. Eliot was in his bed opposite, leaning- on 
his elbow, and mischievously enjoying the effect of his shot, having 
flung his pillow at his cousin. Harry promptly flung it back, and 
Eliot remarking " Thank you," restored it to its proper place and 
lay back again. 

" Half -past seven, Harry ; breakfast in half an hour ! " and, as 
he spoke, the familiar sound of the softly rattling preparations for 
the morning meal were heard from beyond the curtains. 

" Let's toss up to see who has the bathroom first," Eliot pro- 
posed. 

" No, you go first ; you woke up first ! " replied Harry. 

" All right ; here goes ! " and, leaping from bed, he disappeared 
through the door close at hand. Harry had relapsed into the semi- 
conscious doze of morning when his cousin appeared, breathing 
vigorously, and sitting on his bedside to dress, called : " Say Harry 
my boy, isn't it jolly that we can have a cool plunge to begin the 
day with every morning, just the same as ever." 

" Why, so we can ; I wasn't thinking of that ? " 

" I filled the bath as full as possible, and left it for you, so you 
needn't lose any time." 

Harry jumped up, and entering the bathroom was confronted by 
the inviting spectacle of the clear water filling the bath of clean, 
white tiles to within a few inches of the brim. With eyes lighting 
up like those of a water-spaniel at sight of the element he loves, he 
pulled off his nightshirt and in a moment was under water and out 
again, a ruddy glow spreading over every inch of his body, clearing 
away as in a flash every vestige of sleepiness, making him feel quick 
and strono-, with every faculty attuned to the pitch of health. 
After a good rubbing, he joined his cousin. 



30 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

" How stunning- a morning dip like that makes you feel," he said. 

" Doesn't it though? " said Eliot. "Why, the momentary shock 
of the cool water is like a smart blow from a friendly hand, instan- 
taneously smiting every part of the body. It acts on every nerve 
and blood-vessel like a bugle call that arouses a sleeping army into 
activity. It brings the blood to the surface and starts it into 
lively circulation. It literally makes you feel like a new man. 
Many's the tune when I've got out of bed in the morning with a 
dull, used-up feeling, as if I were going to have a siege of indi- 
gestion for two or three days, I've had every trace of it cleared 
away the moment I dipped into a bath of cold water. For me 
there's no medicine like it." 

" Yes, and how tame a sponge-bath seems after you are used to 
a plunge ! " said Harry. 

" It is kind of piece-meal work, while a plunge does the whole 
business in a moment, — takes the whole garrison at once, instead 
of by detachments." 

" But I know some fellows who say they have tried it, and it 
uses them up," said Harry ; " I don't see why it should." 

" Probably because they haven't blood enough, and so the shock 
doesn't bring reaction enough to counteract it. Only those of a 
vio-orous constitution can stand it. But some old grannies say that 
daily bathing is harmful and washes away the strength, — as if 
streno-th were some substance that could be dissolved in water, like 
suo-ar or salt ! It depends on the kind of bathing. Cold baths for 
a strong person are invigorating, but frequent hot baths are debili- 
tatino-. The old Greeks, who understood the means of healthful 
bodily development probably better than any other people, knew 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 31 

the virtues of cold water bathing. Did you ever hear of Appol- 
onius of Tyana ? " 

" Do you mean the one ApoUinaris water was named after ? " 
queried Harry. " I mean, you know, that chapel on the Rhine, 
where the spring is." 

Eliot laughed. " No, that was some old saint, I believe. Appol- 
onius was a wonderful Greek who lived a little before the time of the 
Saviour, and did a great deal to improve the morals of the pagan 
world. It is thought by some that his mission was to j)repare the 
people for the reception of Christianity, and probably the influence 
of his teachings, which was deeply felt through the greater part of 
the Roman empire, made people ready for the Christian doctrine. 
But what I set out to say was that he was one who held that 'clean- 
Hness is next to godliness,' and he believed in the virtue of cold- 
water bathing. One time he went to preach to the people of 
Ephesus. Finding them lamenting that something had happened to 
the hot baths, so that they could not use them, he told them that 
the gods did not regard them as fit to die yet, and so had cut off 
their supply of hot water, that they might be compelled to use cold 
and keep in good health ! " 

By this time they were both dressed. They found the rest of 
the company in the parlor. 

" Well boys, how did you pass the first night out ? " was Mr. 
Brinkley's greeting. 

" This is the kind of ' yachting ' I like " rejilied Eliot ; " it agrees 
with me better than Harry's sort." 

" To even up things, Harry ought to be ' rail-sick ' on board the 
Ariadne, I suppose," laughed Mr. Brinkley. 



32 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

" No danger of that, thank you," responded Harry. 

" We arrived safe in our first port on time this morning you 
see," said their uncle. " It's one of the greatest land-harbors on 
the — no, I can't say on the coast, can I ? Well, on the rail, then. 
Lot's of craft here, and some fine yachts, but nothing like the 
Ariadne, eh ? " 

They were in the yard of the Pennsylvania Railway at Jersey 
City. Although they had left Boston on the Washington express, 
they were not going by way of the national capital, but had come 
with that train that they might make convenient connection with 
the Pennsylvania. Mr. Brinkley had some business in New York, 
and they were to stop over for the day, leaving in the evening, and 
going by way of Chicago and New Mexico. 

Mrs. Brinkley and the young ladies came in, evidently dressed 
for a day of shopping and calls, and they all went in to breakfast. 

" Somehow this seems perfectly outlandish," remarked Florence, 
" breakfasting here in this pleasant style, with all this backing and 
filling of trains, and ringing of bells, and tooting of whistles going 
on about us ! " 

" Wait till we get to Mexico, if you call this outlandish," com- 
mented Eliot. 

" This seems a queer way to come to New York from Boston. 
Being here in Jersey City gives me the feeling of having just 
arrived from Europe on one of the North German Lloyd steam- 
ships," said Mrs. Brinkley. 

After breakfast the party separated for the day, the ladies taking 
the ferry-boat for New York with Mr. Brinkley, while Eliot and 
Harry were to look around by themselves, going first to see one of 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 33 

the splendid great new German steamers at the ])iev in Hoboken, 
not far away. At seven o'clock in the evening they were all 
together again at supper, well tired after a day spent busily in run- 
ning to and fro from one end of the great city almost to the other. 
Then at eight o'clock the " Pacific Express," with the Ariadne in 
tow, rolled slowly out of the station and was soon speeding smoothly 
westward. 

" I am sorry for one thing," said Harry, " and that is that we are 
going through Philadelphia at night, and I shall see nothing of it." 

" Well, my boy, we'll have another chance at that," said his 
uncle. " Perhaps some day we will take in the great cities of our 
country on a special cruise." 

Harry was thinking of sitting up until they reached Philadel- 
phia so that he might see something of it ; but, as Eliot was nod- 
ding and he was yawning himself, he gave up the project and went 
to bed. That night he was only half-conscious of the train stop- 
ping at some station here and there, until the prolonged reduced 
pace, to which the motion at last subsided, aroused him and made 
him surmise that they were drawing in to the great Quaker city. 
He raised his curtain, and saw the gleam of the lights on the 
bridges reflected in the dark water as they crossed the Schuylkill, 
the twinkle of gas-lamps adown straight and level London-like 
streets, running off at right-angles from the elevated track, until 
they finally came to a stop in a great cavernous station which, by 
the j)art of it visible before hun, he could see must be very broad. 
While the noise of scurrying passengers and rattling and banging 
of baggage filled the air, and he was pondering whether he had 
better get up and take a look about, he fell asleep. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE FIRST OF THE CRUISE BY DAYLIGHT. 

^^T'^IME!" sounded in Harry's ears. He opened his eyes 
drowsily and saw Eliot standing over him, just returned 
from the bath. 

" Ahead of you again ! " laughed his cousin. " I hated to de- 
prive you of your turn first, but then you looked so peaceful lying 
there sound asleep it seemed a pity to disturb you. But you don 't 
want to lose any more of this day than you can help. Just look 
outside ! " 

Harry lifted his curtain and the sunshine came streaming in. 
" Oh ! what a morning ! " and he was out of bed before one could say 
"Jack Robinson." It was not long before all were out on the rear 
platform, enjoying a breath of the pure morning air. " Why this is 
almost Mexican weather ! " Eliot exclamied. 

" That is the superlative of praise from Eliot," laughed his sis- 
ter ; " when anything pleases him particularly he says it is almost as 
good as Mexico ! " 

" Hurrah for Mexico, if it is going to be like this ! " cried 
Florence. 

Mr. Brinkley smiled approvingly. " Yes, this weather is a good 
sample of the Mexican table-land climate, cooled down somewhat on 
its Avay northward, but it is only a sample, clipped off of a great 
endless roll of climate that Mother Nature keeps spreading out over 

34 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 35 

that part of the continent from year's end to year's end, almost. 
Now and then she sends a hit of it up North for us, to let us know 
what she has down there ! " 

" The trouble is, that we never know here in the North what the 
weather is going to do next ! " said Mrs. Brinkley. 

" Oh, yes we do," replied her husband. "We can be sure of one 
thing, and that is, that it is going to change ! Now, instead of en- 
joying a day like this while it lasts, a lot of people get melancholy 
over it and call it a ' weather-breeder ' and lose all the comfort of it 
in thinking how uncomfortable they are going to be on the unpleas- 
ant to-morrow ! " 

" For my part," said Mabel, " I am going to get all the pleasure 
out of this glorious weather I can, and if it is bad to-morrow, then I 
am going to take comfort in thinking of the climate we are going 
to enjoy for weeks to come ! " 

" Spoken like a philosopher, my girl ! " said Mr. Brinkley. 

They were climbing the Alleghenies. The great undulating 
slopes, with somber green mantles of pine, hemlock, and other ever- 
greens covering their bare shoulders and mingling with their sober 
winter garb of russet and gray, stretched away in the distance, and 
even the farthest summits, though dimly blue, were sharply outlined 
in the clear, still atmosphere. The air was bracing, but the sun- 
shine was warm, and the whole broad landscape seemed to be laugh- 
ing in the flood of genial light. The track below, with its evenly 
distributed and perfectly ordered bed of rock ballast, seemed to be 
slipping backward beneath them as they ran smoothly on, and, as 
the train whisked round curve after curve, new vistas were contin- 
ually opening out. 



36 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

So all the morning they were kept busy running from side to 
side, or out onto the platform, according to the lay of the landscape, 
and the books that some of them had taken in hand were hardly 
glanced at. Eliot and Mabel assumed the role of cicerones to their 
untraveled younger companions, and Mrs. Brinkley beamed approv- 
ingly over the enthusiasm of the young folks. 

" Oh, what a tremendous curve ! " shouted Harry ; " that train over 
there that's just come out of the tunnel is going along in the same 
direction as we are, so that we seem to be racing it side by side ! " 

" You '11 see it whisk past us in a minute like a shot," said Mr. 
Brinkley. " This is the famous Horse-Shoe Bend." 

Harry looked admiringly down the deep valley and up the steep 
mountain slope, but Eliot said, semi-derisively : " Just wait till we 
get to Mexico and see the chain of curves we shall have then. This 
is a mere one-horse-^OQ bend beside them." 

" If Eliot had only been to heaven, now," called Mabel, " he 
would tell us, every time we felt happy, just to wait until we died if 
we wanted to know what it really was to be happy ! " 

" Why, there are log houses ! " cried Florence, when they were 
some ways further on. " I had no idea we should see log houses 
before we got out West or down South. " And those queer-looking 
women with blue sugar-scoops on their heads ! You can 't see their 
faces at all ! And such gaunt creatures, with their dresses making 
a straight line from shoulder to foot ! " 

" That is the regulation female garb for the country regions all 
the way from the Alleghenies to Colorado," explained Mabel. 
" Even in our enlightened land there are regions where the scepter 
of Queen Fashion has no power." 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



37 



" With those poking sun-bonnets and lean figures they always 
make me think of walking guide-posts," observed Eliot. 

" But Pennsylvania ! " cried Florence ; " I had no idea there 
was anything so behind the times here, when it is in the East ! " 

" If being behind in fashion were the only thing to find fault 
with in Pennsylvania I wouldn 't have a word to say," said Eliot, 
his face darkening and eyes kindling. "But when it comes to 
being behind in civilization ! 
It is bad enough almost any- 
Avhere, but what do you think 
of a State that allows little 
children to be sent to work 
in the coal-breakers instead 
of to school, as soon as they 
get old enough to be sent to 
school, — to work all day in the choking black dust, to be wrecked 
for life, body and soul, if by chance any of them live long enough 
to grow up ! " 

" horrible ! horrible ! " cried the others. " But is that really 
true ? " 

" As true as gospel ! " rejjlied Eliot. 

" But why don 't they stop it ? " asked Harry, 

" Because the parents are so poor they can 't live without put- 
ting their little ones to work almost as soon as they can toddle, and 
the companies that employ them want to make all the money 
possible." 

" But that ought not to be," said Florence. 

" Certainly not," responded Eliot. " But what will be the future 




38 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

of a State where the Kves of the children, who are the material for 
the coming" men and women, are allowed to be wasted in that 
way? Why, every farmer knows what would become of his Hve- 
stock if his colts and calves and lambs were unfed and sickly," 

" But I thought Pennsylvania was an inteUigent State ! " said 
Harry. 

" Does that look like intellia-ence ? " asked Eliot. " How can 
we expect a State to be intelligently governed when so many of its 
people are growing up in ignorance ? But in Pennsylvania they 
are human, as elsewhere ; a State with such a grand history ought 
to have a grand future. Some day they will get aroused and wipe 
out the disgrace of an evil as wicked as negro slavery was ! " 

On and on they went through the mountains, down the narrow 
valley of the Conemaugh, where they saw the traces of the great 
Johnstown flood. In places the landscape was so scarred that it 
seemed as if Nature's hand would never heal it. But the city, 
where a few months before thousands had been swept out of life in 
an instant, appeared to have recovered itself wonderfully, and re- 
built on every hand, it looked remarkably prosperous. 

Before one o'clock they had descended to Pittsburg — busy, grow- 
ing, and covered with grime. " I should think the place had been 
named on account of this black pit of a valley, instead of for the 
British statesman," Harry observed. Although the use of natural 
gas had cleared the air remarkably in the past few years, it still 
seemed very smoky to his Eastern eyes. 

Then, on through the afternoon sunshine, skirting for a while 
the yellow Ohio river, where for a rarity the odd-looking, bhmt- 
nosed and stern-wheeled steamboats were now and then to be seen 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 39 

with long- lines of coal barg-es behind in tow, for there had yet been 
no i'je this remarkable winter, and navigation was still open. 

" Those steamboats look like wheel-barrows turned upside dowc 
and going- backwards ! " said Harry. 

Steadily on they sped through the great state of Ohio, amid 
prosperous farms, winding among rolling hills abounding Avith 
woods, and stopping at large towns where the many tall steeples 
were rivalled in height and surpassed in number by the factory 
chimneys that seemed like pillars supporting a dark canopy of 
smoke hanging over each jilace. "I had no idea there were so 
many large places out here," said Harry ; "it seems as thickly set- 
tled and solidly built as New England." 

" I think that nearly everybody who comes West for the first 
tune expects to find things half wild and in the rough," remarked 
Eliot. " But we must remember that Ohio is a pretty old State, and 
the people here never think of themselves as being ' Out West.' " 

" The country, too, seems like New England, only more mellow 
and expansive," said Mabel. 

" I should think it would be beautiful in the spring and sum- 
mer," said Florence. " Only I don 't like the looks of that muddy 
water standing and running everywhere. But they don 't appear to 
have anything else. How can people ever drink it ! " 

As dusk came on it seemed as if some holiday celebration were 
going on, so frequent were the illuminations from the flame-belchino- 
chimneys of iron-furnaces and from the exposed interiors of rollino-- 
mills, where, as they passed, they could see the dazzling dots of the 
white-heated masses of molten metal revealed through the open 
doors of furnaces. The gangs of men who pulled it about into 



40 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 




long, wriggling streaks 
looked like dancing imps, 
black against the fierce 
light, and the gleaming bars 
that they were handling 
seemed hissing serpents, as 
they changed slowly from 
luminous white to orange, 
and in a sullen red glow 
faded out into darkness. 
In one region through which 
they passed, instead of electric lights 
or ordinary street-lamps, the towns 
had what looked like torches stuck 
into the ground with ragged pen- 
nants of flame lazily waving in the 
still night air. Here there were no 
smoke-clouds to give lurid reflections, for natural gas was the 
universal fuel, and everything Avas bright and clean. 

While the young people were looking out at these sights 
something startling occurred that made them all jump with fright ; 
all except Eliot, who, having been that way before, knew what 
was coming and was prepared to enjoy the consternation of his 
companions. As the train was moving slowly through the fields 
in its approach to a large town, suddenly there shot from a 
tall, thick pipe standing not far from the track, a tremendous 
great mass of flame, with a roar like that of a hundred thousand 
steam boilers blowing oft" at once, as Harry afterwards expressed 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 41 

it. The young ladies shrieked, and for a moment Harry felt 
as if his heart were coming- up into his mouth. The roaring 
grew even louder as the flames shot up still higher. The fire-mass 
was dancing upon the top of a grayish stream of vapor that rushed 
out of the pipe with tremendous force for about twenty feet before 
turning into a blaze. It was like a gigantic bouquet of flame- 
flowers, of the most vivid tints, constantly changing, — orange, 
yellow, crimson, purple, green, violet, and blue, — with huge 
tongues licking the darkness and sheets of fire flapping downward, 
as if savagely seeking to devour some one below. For a long dis- 
tance around everything was illuminated as brightly as in the light 
of a conflagration. 

It is only a natural gas well ! " explained Eliot, still laughing at 
their fright. " They ' shoot it ' every time a through train passes 
by in the evening, so as to advertise their town." 

" It is the most awful thing I have ever seen ! " cried Mabel, 
still holding her ears. 

" That's the most magnificent fireworks in the world ! " shouted 
Harry. 

" Absolutely gorgeous ! " Florence exclaimed. 

" That well is one of the biggest around," said Eliot. " It can 
send out ten million feet an hour, and the pressure is so great that 
it condenses the gas and makes it visible in that gray stream you 
see, like water from a fire-hose." 

" Why, if they only had it in Boston, at a dollar a thousand it 
would be worth a thousand dollars an hour ! " calculated Harry. 
" If they could only keep up the price with such a supply at 
hand ! " he added. 



42 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

" They wasted the gas out here terribly at first," Eliot went 
on. " They once believed that the supply was inexhaustible, but 
now scientists generally agree that it will not last a great many 
years, and so they have grown more careful not to waste it. It's 
use in these places out here has made a wonderful change. It has 
so increased general convenience and comfort, besides being so 
economical that even if the supply of natural gas should be 
exhausted they would never return to the use of coal, but would 
manufacture gas for fuel. Gas, I believe, will undoubtedly be the 
fuel of the future. It can be made for a few cents a thousand." 

" What a grand thing it would be, if everywhere they could 
only get rid of coal-dust, ashes, and smoke, as they have out 
here ! " said Harry. 

" In this city, for instance, you will not find a coal-wagon or 
wood-cart in town," said Eliot. " And in lots of houses you will see 
the shovel from the coal-bin hung on the j)arlor waU, gilded and 
decorated and tied with ribbons, with the inscription, ' Laid to rest 
on January 9, 1888,' or whatever the date of the introduction of 
natural gas into the house may have been." 

" How perfectly delicious ! " cried Florence. 



CHAPTER V. 

IN THE HEART OF THE CONTINENT* 

" OO that is Chicago off there ! " 

It was the next morning, and they were looking out over 
what seemed an endless expanse of land, as flat as the ocean level. 
The horizon line was broken by clumps of buildings here and 
there, with factory chimneys thrusting themselves up into the gray 
sky and increasing its sombreness with their black fumes. 

" Yes, where all that smoke is," responded Eliot to Harry's 
remark, and referring to a thick, black cloud in the distance 
towards the northwest that hung down on the land and covered it 
like a pall, obscuring the view in that direction. 

They had been standing still for some time. It was early day- 
light. Mr. Brinkley came out of his stateroom and asked : 

" What is the matter ? Here it is nearly eight o'clock, and we 
should have been in Chicago at 7.05. Have we ' run aground,' 
Harry?" 

Harry laughed to hear the nautical term and replied in kind : 

" Oh, no ; I've just been out to ' take an observation.' Nothing 
has happened to us, but there's the wreck of a freighter ahead, 
blocking our channel ; that is, there's a freight train smashed up on 
the crossing just out there, and we've been waiting here for orders. 
The conductor just told me that we were going to run back a piece 
and switch over onto the Grand Trunk, going in over their track 
for some ways and then getting back onto the Fort Wayne." 

43 



44 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

Just then they started, and they were soon within the limits of 
the great city that is spreading its huge bulk out over the prairie, 
the rows of little wooden houses huddling closer and closer as they 
proceeded. At last they saw a lot of masts rising over the houses, 
and came close to a narrow strip of water full of steamers and tugs 
hauled up for the winter. 

" This Chicago river has a greater commerce than any other body 
of water of its size in the world," said Mr. Brinkley. " Chicago is 
the first port in the country in respect to tonnage, and second only 
to New York in number of vessels arriving and departing. 

Harry looked at the craft with critical eyes : " All those 
steamers, with the smokestack way astern, and built so straight up 
and down behind, have a clumsy sawed-off look. One of the 
"freight boats between Boston and Gloucester came from the lakes 
and is built just like that, and they call her the ' Junk of Pork ' all 
along the coast ! " 

As they passed through the station, on their way to drive to a 
hotel, Florence gave a shudder at the sight of the gaudy decorations 
and declared it " atrociously Western." 

" But Chicago ideas have changed in the past ten years ; I'm 
a great believer in Chicago," replied her father. " They thought 
this station splendid when it was built ; but now they have some of 
the finest modern architecture on the continent here in this city. 
A pity they coat it all over with soot, though ! " he added, as they 
drove away through the streets darkened with the heavy clouds of 
bituminous smoke that came dropping down upon them. They 
were going to spend the day looking over the city, and Mr. Brinkley 
had arranged to have the Ariadne taken around to the Dearborn 




THE WRECK. 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 45 

Street station, where they were going ont at six o'clock by the 
" Sante Fe^" 

Eliot and Harry went by themselves to roam over the city 
together and see what interested them. 

" Yesterday was a weather-breeder, true enough," grumbled the 
former, buttoning his ulster close around his neck and turning up 
his collar. " This clammy air, filled with soot, makes me sneeze and 
cough and shiver, all at once." 

" It seems like a Boston east wind with the salt taken out 
of it! " said Harry. 

" The cold air from the lake acts on these shores like a refrigr- 
erator ! There's old Michigan now ! " and Eliot pointed to a 
leaden expanse at the end of the street. " It seems strange to see 
it in January without any ice ! I've seen it towards the end of 
May, white mth ice-cakes as far as the eye can reach, and making 
the air of the city like that of March, while ten miles out, going 
west, I found it as balmy as June, with vegetation several weeks in 
advance." 

But, when they came together at the train that evening, and 
discussed the events of the day at the supper-table while they rolled 
westward through the darkness, Mr. Brinkley found all the young 
people enthusiastic over Chicago, in spite of its climate and its 
smoke. 

" Harry and I made a break for the bathroom, though, as soon 
as we got aboard. We felt like chimney-sweeps," said Eliot. They 
had the genuine American admiration for the energy, enthusiasm, 
and ceaseless activity whose results were manifest in the gigantic 
growth and achievements of the great city. Eliot, as an actual 



46 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

engineer, and Harry, as a prospective electrician, were particularly 
interested in the public works. " They go at things in a practical, 
common-sense way," said the former. " They are going to spend 
I don't know how many millions on a great system of sewerage 
and water-supply." 

"And I noticed that they have a fine system of electric hghting, 
and run all the wires underground, although the companies in 
Boston say they can't do it ; it is too dangerous ! " said Harry. But 
the chief engineer, whom we had a talk with at the city works, says 
it is perfectly safe and they never had an accident. The thing of it 
is, the city runs the lights itself, and does it for a quarter of what 
Boston pays the companies. He laughed when we said we were 
from Boston, and said, ' We don't celebrate our Thanksgiving out 
here by burning down a large part of our business section, in conse- 
quence of overhead electric-light wires ! ' " 

" When do we cross the Mississippi, father ? " asked Florence. 

" At about one o'clock in the morning. We cross to Fort 
Madison in Iowa and make almost, a bee-line for Kansas City, cut- 
ting across the southeastern corner of Iowa." 

" Oh, dear ! " Harry sighed ; " the trouble with me is I want to 
see everything. Here I haven't seen a speck of Indiana, and only 
just this patch of Illinois around Chicago, and now we are going to 
cross the Mississippi in the middle of the night, and I shall not see a 
bit of Iowa, either ! " 

" Never mind," said Eliot consolingly, " you can say you've 
been there all the same, and tliat is the main thing ; aU the country 
out this way looks alike in the winter, so it is just as well to pass 
through it fast asleep ! And although you miss the Mississippi, 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 47 

you'll see the Missouri in the morning, which amounts to the same 
thing" you know, for the geography tells us that is the mam stream, 
and it is always reckoned so in making out the Mississippi the 
longest river in the world." 

" And besides, we shall see the Mississippi where it is largest, 
when we cross it at New Orleans on our way back," Mr. Brinkley 
added. 

Harry resolved, however, to look out at the Mississippi when 
they came to it ; but unfortunately for his determination he was 
now completely accustomed to sleeping on the train ; nothing in the 
usual line of occurrences disturbed him, and being healthily tired 
after his day in Chicago, the slow crawling of the train over the 
long- bridofe across the " Father of Waters " did not awaken him. 
In the inky darkness of that night, he would not have seen any 
more than an uncertain gleam of the dark current flowing below, 
had he lifted the curtain of the window beside him. 

Shortly after daylight the next morning they crossed the Mis- 
souri, and while they were at breakfast the train ran along the 
southern shore for something like half an hour, and they watched 
the swift and turbid current of the great stream from the windows 
as they ate. 

" The ' Big Muddy ' they call it out here," said Mr. Brinkley. 

" And a most appropriate name it is ! " exclaimed Florence. 
" It looks like a river of pea soup. I don't see how water can be 
any muddier." 

'' It can, though," said Mabel. " You ought to see the Colo- 
rado ! It is absolutely red, and when I crossed it at the Needles, 
on the way to California, it looked like liquid vermillion." 



48 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

" They tell a story about a man who fell off a steamboat here on 
the Missouri in the night," said Eliot. " He swam and swam, carried 
by the current, and at last gave up, exhausted ; but when he went 
to sink, he found himself standing with the water below his waist. 
He had been struggling in less than three feet of water ever since 
he fell overboard, and he was so angry at his waste of exertion 
that he forgot to be thankful for his escape ! " 

" What a splendid train this is ! " said Florence, who, with 
Harry, had been forward exploring, according to a custom which 
they had adopted of making a daily tour of the cars. " It seems 
like our car enlarged into a whole train." 

" Yes, it made me think of being on an ocean steamer," said 
Harry. " The vestibules make the whole train like one continuous 
car, and the different cars seem like the various saloons of a steam- 
ship ; so we are now like a yacht in the tow of a great steamer." 

" Yes," said Mr. Brinkley, " they have got the luxury of travel 
by rail reduced to a science, and we, in our car, are not so very much 
more comfortably fixed than those in the Pullmans of this train, 
except that we are by ourselves and can stop and go on as we may 
please, — beside the various little improvements I have introduced 
in construction and arrangement, which will probably be generally 
adopted before long. But here we are with Kansas City in sight." 

They had left the river and were skirting the city around to the 
southward, by the " Beit-Line Railway," 

" Kansas City is almost a second Chicago in its wonderful 
growth," observed Eliot. " The real name of the place is the ' City 
of Kansas,' and it was named before Kansas, the State. It seems 
remarkable that the great centre of commerce for that State, beai"- 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 49 

ing- the same name, should be just over the hne outside its Kmits, in 
Missouri. But a considerable portion of the city is in Kansas. 
The name of that part is ' Kansas City, Kansas,' and it joins the 
main city, so that a stranger could not tell where one ends and the 
other begins." 

They drew slowly into the Union Depot, wending their way 
throuo'h such a maze of tracks that it seemed almost wonderful how 
they could be kept from going astray. At the station there were 
numerous trains drawn up, placarded to depart in every direction. 
Mr. Brinkley jiroposed that they all get out for a morning constitu- 
tional along the platform of the station. The air was soft and 
summer-like. The young men declared that overcoats were super- 
fluous in weather like that, and refused to put them on. 

" What a day for January ! " cried Mabel. " This seems really 
Southern ! " 

" That must be because Missouri is a Southern State ! " re- 
marked Harry. 

" Yes, and to-morrow," said his uncle, " as likely as not the 
mercury might drop below zero ! The clunate runs to extremes out 
this way." 

A line of high, clay bluffs capped with a dense mass of build- 
ings, towered above the level where they were standing. Leading 
thither, with inclines, trestles, etc., were various lines of cable-cars. 

" The main portion of the city lies up there," said Eliot. 
" Down here on the river-bottom, as they call it, are the factories, 
jDacking-establishments, stock-yards, and the like." 

"It is very much like Quebec, then, with its Upper Town and 
Lower Town," said Mabel. 



50 THE CRUISE OF A LAND- YACHT. 

" How I should like to rim up there through that place and see 
how it looks on the other side ! " Florence cried, pointing to a 
tunnel opening in the face of the bluff. 

" We can do it if we like," said Eliot. " The cars are running 
all the time ; we have nearly half an hour before the train starts, 
and we can get up there and back in a few minutes." 

" Let's go, then ! Do you hear what Eliot says, father ? 
Can't we ? " 

Mrs. Brinkley gave a sign of alarm at the idea of their going so 
far from the train ; but her husband said he would trust them with 
Eliot, and off the young people scampered in great glee to the 
elevated railroad station close by. A minute more and they were 
on board a cable-car and going up the incline towards the tunnel. 

" They have hardly anything but cable-cars all over the city 
now," said Eliot. " Perhaps they are the best system for a place 
where they have such steep inclines as this, but electricity is far 
more practical, and in Lynn the electric-cars run up a grade of 
twelve per cent, or six hundred and twenty-four feet to the mile. 
There is a most extravagant waste of energy in the cable-system, for 
it takes something like eighty-five per cent of the power to move the 
heavy cables, with their length of several miles of steel rope. With 
electricity the economy is almost in reverse ratio. Electricity acts 
on a principle similar to that of a belt or cable, in the moving of 
cars, but it is so subtile in its action that the mysterious force slips 
along through the conducting wires with comparatively little fric- 
tion. The waste of power in the cable-system is in something like 
the same proportion as the waste of human energy in doing the work 
of the world, where it is estimated that something hke ninety per 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND- YACHT. 51 

cent, of the exertion is wasted in overcoming the friction caused by 
so many persons working at cross purposes. The electric-system is 
like the smoother way the work of the world will be done some time 
when we learn how to plan things in greater harmony. There is 
nothing like thorough organization for doing things promptly and 
well." 

They had passed through the tunnel and shortly after their 
car came to a full stop at the end of its route. They stepped out, 
and looked up and down the streets that crossed at right angles. 

" What splendid great high buildings ! " Florence exclaimed. 

" Yes, they give the distinctive character to Kansas City more 
than the similar great structures do to our Eastern cities. It is a 
most stately and substantial looking place. The ordinary kind of 
Western building, put up in the ' vernacular' style , as the architects 
say, is a cheap and ramshackle affair, merely thrown together. So 
when the wonderful growth of a place like this demands first-class 
buildings, it is an easy thing to clear the ground of the old rub- 
bish. That is the reason why Chicago and Kansas City can change 
their architectural character and take on a more uniform appearance 
of rich massiveness with greater promptness than New York or 
Boston, where the old buildings are costly and elaborate in com- 
parison. But we must be starting back for our train ! " said Eliot 
looking at his watch. 

In a few minutes more they were standing in the pleasant sun- 
shine on the " quarter-deck " of the Ariadne, as they had called the 
rear platform, watching the busy scenes around them as they ao-ain 
began to move westward. 



CHAPTER VI. 



OVER PRAIRIES AND PLAINS. 



^^ IT ERE we are in Kansas ! " cried Eliot, a few seconds after they 
^ ^ had started. " That street there is the boundary." 

" The land of John Brown and the border war ! " said Mr. 
Brinkley. " This State has had a notable history and a wonderful 
growth. It seems to have compressed the experience of centuries 
into the period of a generation ! " 

" That is the advantage that a new community has now-a-days, 
starting on a fresh soil," said his wife. " In these days of quick 
communication, and interchange of ideas as weU as materials, it has 
the benefit of what all the rest of the world has been learning for 

ages." 

"There — there is the Kaw ! " called Eliot, pointing out a 
large stream on the right. We shall follow that all the way to To- 

peka." 

" Why, it is a good large river ! " exclaimed Harry. " But how 
is it I never heard of it before ? I thought I knew my geography 
particularly well. I stand 100 per cent, in that, I'd have you 
know, old man ! " 

" Its real name is the Kansas, but they all call it the Kaw out 
here," Eliot explained. 

" yes, of course ! And it flows into the Missouri at Kansas 
City. But why do they call it the Kaw ? " 

52 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND- YACHT. 53 

" It is simply a corruption of the name Kansas, which was origi- 
nally pronounced Kansaw, just as Arkansas today is pronounced 
' Arkansaw,' by the solemnly-enacted law of the State which got 
disgusted with our Eastern insistence on rhyming it with Kansas. 
Both names came to us from the Indians by way of the French, 
who formerly, you know, owned all this country in the Mississippi 
valley, and that is why, like Illinois, they end in a silent s. The 
Americans who came out this way didn 't have very quick ears, ap- 
parently, for they at once corrupted Kanscnv into Kaw, and have 
gone on mispronouncing every Indian and Spanish word they could 
get hold of, ever since. As both the city and the State of Kansas 
were named from the river, it is a wonder they didn 't call them 
Kaw too ! If chey would only call Kansas City, at any rate, Kaw 
City, they might save a good many misdirected letters from persons 
who think it is in Kansas instead of Missouri. They might make 
one word of it and call the place Kawcity, which would make it 
formed after the style of ' capacity.' That would be quite in ac- 
cordance with their expansive ideas, since they hold that the capac- 
ity of their place is unlimited, which it practically is so far as popu- 
lation is concerned, judging by the square miles of new ' additions ' 
the speculators laid out during the recent boom ! They are quick 
to take a hint for an original name here in the West and I 've a 
great mind to suggest it. They have a good many more strangely 
compounded names out here — Texarkana, for instance, made up 
out of Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana ! " 

" But," objected his sister, " Kawcity would rhyme with ' Pau- 
city,' and that would not please a place that is the very centre of 
abundance, as well as the ' Hub of the United States '." 



54 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

" And then the wicked Chicago papers would be sure to catch 
on to the chance to work up a. racket on the hands of the Kansas 
City women after the style of the girls'-feet dispute with St. Louis^ 
and would call it ' Paw City/ " rejoined Eliot. 

" But you said the real name of the place was the City of Kan- 
sas, and so they would have to call it the City of Kaw," put in 
Harry. " That would be supposed to have something to do with 
the crows, and for such a get-up-and-get kind of people to be taken 
for croakers would give them cause to complain ! " 

" You horrid boy ! " cried Florence ; " I'm sure you are getting 
under the influence of Kansas humor already and have been reading 
some of it. Say, Mr. Howells told father the other day about a new 
humorist they've got out here, and he's brought the book along ! " 

" That man who says he'll ' wear Arcturus for a bosom-pin ' ? 
His poems are immense. It's the real Kansas style of saying things. 
Think of that ' Kansas zephyr ' that turned the barking pup wrong- 
side up and inside out and then 

Calmly journeyed thence 

With a barn and string of fence ! 

" I see he Avrites under the name of ' Ironquill,' which, perhaps, 
is meant for ironical," said Florence. 

Mr. Brinkley joined the group. " The Missouri river, that we 
have just left," he said, " was the frontier of the ' Wild West ' until 
after the war, and now there is hardly any more ' Wild West ' to be 
seen anywhere. The old Sante Fe trail started from the Missouri at 
Kansas City, and that was what made the beginning of that place. 
The steamboats would come from St. Louis and leave their cargoes 
at the little landing to be taken in ^ prairie schooners.' You see, 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 55 

Harry, they've had the idea of land navig-ation out here for a good 
many years and we are now yachting it over an old line of commerce 
laid out by Nature, something like the track of the trade-winds for 
ships coming from the Old World. Well, as I was saying, the 
prairie schooners took their cargoes over the famous old ' Santa Fe 
trail ' for nearly a thousand miles into New Mexico through the 
wilderness, across the prairies and plains, to supply that country 
with goods from the East — which cost pretty high by the time 
they got there. Those were the days of romance and adventure in 
the wild West, — Indians, wolves, buffalo, wild horses, antelopes, 
hardships, starvation, and all the rest of the material you find in 
the books of Mayne Reid, Ballantyne, and other books of the kind." 

•' Isn't it remarkable that this main line of the Atchison, Topeka 
& Sante Fe Railroad follows close to the Sante Fe trail nearly all 
the way ? " said Eliot. " It shows how men, in striking out the^ 
easiest way to get across country, and going haphazard, will instinct- 
ively follow the lines that an engineer would take in his deliberate 
survey." 

" I see all the locomotives and freight-cars on this railroad are 
marked ' Santa Fe Route,' " Harry observed. 

" Yes," replied Eliot, " that is what you might call the ' trade- 
mark ' of the line, the nickname, that has been adopted by the man- 
agement, and is often something quite different from the name of 
the company. There is the ' Sunset Route,' for instance, the 
' Monon,' the ' Nickel Plate,' the ' Big Four,' the ' Panhandle,' the 
' Bee Line,' the ' Burlington Route,' the ' Frisco,' etc." 

" But everybody calls it the ' Atchison ' in the East." 

" Yes, and on the street they call it ' the Atch.' Out here 



56 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

everybody calls it the ' Santa Fe.' A railway often quite outgrows 
its name. Atchison, its original starting point, is a city of not much 
importance, and Santa Fe, its original objective point, is now at the 
terminus of a little branch off the main line. The use of Santa Fe 
in the name of the Httle coal railroad of fifteen years ago gave it an 
absurdly ambitious sound in the ears of people out here, and, except 
to a few sanguine ' dreamers,' as they were called, the idea of ever 
building the line to the almost mythical capital of New Mexico was 
as visionary, as impracticable, as ' Utopian,' even to the big-notioned 
people of Kansas, as Bellamy's ideal in ' Looking Backward ' seems 
to our Pfood friend General Francis A. Walker, for instance. After 
all, the ' dreamers ' are sometmies the most practical people in the 
world." 

When they reached Lawrence it was pointed out as the historic 
place that was the centre of the colonization movement from Massa- 
chusetts started by the Emigrant Aid Society that made Kansas a 
free State, and raised the excitement which was one of the du'ect 
causes of the great civil war. 

" Why, these hills around here are almost as high as those 
around Boston," exclauned Florence. " And this is a prairie state 
too ! I declare it's a downright imposition ! A country that is com- 
posed of prairies has no right to put on such airs and have hills 
, too ! " 

They all laughed and Eliot said : " They are rolling prairies, 
and when you stand on one of these long land-swells and look off 
over the country, you see that it is of a general level ; it almost 
seems as if you were at sea, with its long waves rising and falling 
about you, except that the undulations are motionless. In mid- 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 57 

summer you can fancy it is in motion, though, with the broad 
reaches of grain and grass waving in the steady wind, and the 
shadows of the clouds moving across the surface, sometimes singly, 
sometimes in batallions, and visible for miles and miles away. 
From down here by the river those prairie swells, as the stream cuts 
its way through, look like ranges of hills. Lawrence here is a 
beautiful, quiet place, thoroughly New England in character, and 
seems like one of our Eastern college towns. There is a charming 
view off over the valley from the high ground where the State 
University stands." 

It was noon when they reached Topeka, the State capital, and 
they went out to walk up and down the station platform while the 
passengers were at dinner. " Why, there is my old friend Colonel 
Johnson," exclaimed Mr. Brinkley, hastening forward and cordially 
seizing the hand of a gentleman who was getting out of a carriage. 

" And if there isn't Charlie Gleed ! " cried Eliot, at sight of a 
younger man coming from a street-car that had just stopped at the 
station. " 0, Gleed ! " he shouted, and his Topeka friend stopped 
in astonishment at the sound of his voice. 

" If you didn't accent the ' ' so strongly, I should think 
everybody here in the West was Irish, and the descendant of Irish 
kings at that ! " said Harry, with a laugh. " I notice men when 
they call out to each other, ever since we left Chicago, sing out : 
' Smith ! Jones ! Brown ! ' " 

" Yes, that is the universal style of accosting out here," Eliot 
replied. 

" Well, Sampson, old fellow, where did you drop from ? " said 
his friend, coming up. 



58 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

" Off Oil a yachting-cruise to Mexico Avith my uncle, Mr. 
Brinkley. ' 

" Yachting ? Well, this is a good season for it ! No ice in the 
Kaw yet ! But you'll have to dig a canal from here on, or take to 
dry land ! But what do you mean hy yachting? — is that one of 
your new Boston notions ? " 

" On the contrary, it is one of your Western ideas that we 
benighted Easterners have taken to ! Land-yachting, I mean. Do 
you see our craft there ? " 

" What, that snowy ' special ? ' Well, she does look different 
enough from a Pullman to be called a yacht, or anything else you 
■choose. No wonder there's a crowd of train-hands about her, look- 
ing as if she had dropped from the moon." 

" But where are you going, Charlie ? " 

"Just running up to Wichita with the Colonel on some busi- 
ness." 

" Good enough ! Then of course you'll keep us company as far 
as Newton. I see my uncle has taken the Colonel inside." 

When Mr. Brinkley introduced Colonel Johnson to the young 
people, he said : "We have a rare historical specimen in the Colonel, 
you must know — an imico, as the Spanish say — the only one of 
the kind. In other words, Colonel Johnson was the first white 
child born in Kansas." 

" Born in Kansas ? " exclaimed Mrs. Brinkley, semi-seriously. 
" I didn't know anybody was ever born in Kansas ! I thought every- 
body came here. That is the way I can't help feeling about the 
entire West, from Chicago on ! Though perhaps I might concede 
that Mr. Gleed was born here." 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 59 

" On the contrary," said Eliot, " Gleed is a born Yermonter. 
But he is a Kansan of the Kansans, all the same. The Colonel, 
though, is a New Englander at heart, and a foster-child of the sea, 
which allowed him to catch, off Pigeon Cove, the biggest codfish on 
record ! " 

It was a memorable afternoon for the young people, for the two 
guests knew Kansas from end to end, and they heard so much of 
mterest about the history and the wonderful development of the 
State, that they became as enthusiastic about it as though Kansans 
themselves. They were struck by the cultivated appearance of 
many of the towns they passed through, with well shaded streets, 
substantial business buildings, and charming looking dwellings of 
tasteful architecture. 

" It was nine years ago the first time I was out here, you remem- 
ber, Charlie," said Eliot. " The change since then has been almost 
magical. Even at that time, the trail of the frontier was over it 
all ! Why, in Topeka, the State capital, there was not a decent 
hotel, and except at the railway restaurants hardly an endurable 
meal was to be had in the State outside of private families. In 
Topeka the streets were ankle deep with mud after a shower, and 
they were just building the first street-railway in the State ! Now, 
they have better streets than New York or Boston ; miles and 
miles paved with asphalt. In Boston we used to say that we will- 
ingly paid liberally for public expenditures, for we insisted on 
getting the best for our money. That is true no longer. We 
still pay liberally, but now we do not get the best, for the money is 
largely misused by our incompetent city government." 

Passing through a grimy coal-mining region, where the land had 



60 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

a sterile and forbidding look, they descended into the valley of the 
Arkansas, the main stream of the southern portion of the State, and 
which they were to follow for the rest of the way through Kansas 
and well into Colorado. But, at that time of the year it was dark 
some time before they came to where that broad and shallow river 
mio-ht otherwise have been seen. " What a finished look this 
country has ! " observed Florence. " It doesn't seem like a newly 
settled region at all." 

" And yet white people have lived here less than fifteen years," 
said Mr. Gleed, with a touch of pride in the development of his 
State. 

" With so many substantial stone walls in that limestone region 
we have just passed through, and now with these long lines of 
hedges dividing the fields, the country has a sort of English look," 
said Eliot. 

" You see our wonderful capacity for growth includes the power 
to grow old quicker than any other country," responded Mr. Gleed, 

Harry observed that the prairies hereabouts were different from 
those they had passed through ; they were no longer rolling, but 
stretched evenly away to the horizon, their surface-monotony broken 
by houses standing here and there, in every direction, surrounded 
by trees, and looking like islands of an archipelago, he thought. 

" You will hardly find any of the primeval prairies anywhere, 
now," said Colonel Johnson, " outside of the Indian territory and 
some remote portions of Texas ; the land has all been taken u]3." 

" What a change in nine years ! It seems as if settlers must 
have poured in here in a perfect flood. When I was out here in '81 
I used to drive with Colonel Haren for miles and miles over the 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



61 



ojjen prairie, and there wasn 't such a thing as a house in sight," 
said Eliot. 

" The frontier days were only just over then," remarked Mr. 
Gleed ; " at Newton, now a handsome, good-sized city, where the 
passengers of this train take supper this evening, there was nothing 
but a tough settlement of shanties ; it was the end of the track then, 
and in the construction of railroads out in 
this country the ' end of the track ' has al- 
ways been a rough place, with lawlessness, 
gambling, and all sorts of crime. 




ON THE " QUARTERDECK." 



including Lynch law. Just out- 
side of the town there is a little 
patch of ground called '■ Boot 
Hill ' graveyard where those are 
buried who ' died with their boots 
on ; ' that is to say, who met with 

a violent death. Eleven men were shot and killed in one nio-ht. 
But within one year from that time Newton became one of the most 
quiet and orderly communities in America, and has been so ever 
since. Some of our young towns here in Kansas have eventful 
histories, for all their few years." 

" Where is Father Swemberg now? " asked Eliot. 

" He died in Florida two or three years ago," replied Mr. Gleed. 

" Father Swemberg was the pioneer Catholic priest in Kansas, 
west of Topeka," explained Eliot. " I spent a delightful evenino- 
with him in his house in Newton, listening to his stories of 
adventure on the plains and among the Indians. He once saw a 
battle between the troops and the Indians. One of the soldiers who 



62 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

was killed, liappened to fall near an ant-hill, and within a few hours 
after that his skull was picked up eaten smooth by the ants, and 
looking- as if it had been polished. He showed me the skull in his 
collection of relics." 

" Do you remember his yellow cat ? " asked Mr. Gleed. " We 
have it in our Kansas Historical Society now. It was an Indian 
tobacco pouch, made of the entire skin of a yellow pussy, stripped 
off, as the Indians do, without cutting- it open, and ornamented with 
beads and strips of red flannel. Very likely they ate the cat. It is 
a valuable relic, for it came from the last emigrant train attacked 
by the Indians in Kansas. It was when the Arrapahoes and Chey- 
ennes broke out from the Indian territory in 1879 and left a trail of 
blood and ashes across this State from South to North, in conse- 
quence of the broken promises of the authorities at Washington — 
a chapter in our ' Century of Dishonor ' that cost scores of innocent 
lives and an enormous amount of money. Everybody felt secure 
then, for there had been peace for a long time, and the country was 
fairly well settled. That yellow cat was probably the pet pussy of 
some family that was taking it from the old home to the new. 
Everybody was killed. The pouch was taken from the Indians 
when they were captured, and was given to Father Swemberg by the 
of&cer who had it. Father Swemberg- gave it to my friend Baxter, 
who last year sent it by me, when I was in Boston, to the Historical 
Society. Only eleven years ago last December was that terrible 
time, when all Kansas was panic-stricken ! And now it seems like 
ancient history ! " 

Their friends took supper with them before they reached New- 
ton, where they left them to take the branch train for Wichita, on 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 63 

the line that runs through Oklahoma and Texas down to the Gulf 
of Mexico at Galveston. 

When Harry lifted his window curtain the next morning his 
first thought was that he was on board the Brynhilda and looking 
at a sunrise on the ocean. The flat, brown plain stretched away to 
the horizon without a break. The sky was perfectly cloudless and 
the sun was just appearing, a great glittering ball, over the rim of 
the world. But Harry also heard the wind shrieking outside and 
felt the car perceptibly leaning southward under the steady pressure 
of the blast, and he knew that in such a gale all that expanse 
would be furrowed with heaving swells and crested with white-caps 
were it really the ocean. But the illusion was very near, and the 
vast, dreary plain was taken to his heart by reason of the resem- 
blance. 

When he and Eliot stepped out onto the " quarter-deck " for a 
whiff of morning air, they did not stay long, though wrapped in 
their ulsters, for the keen fierce wind, blowing from the north, cut 
like knives with the fine dust whirled from the frozen plain. " Here 
we are, well into Colorado, and over four thousand feet above the 
sea," said Eliot, as they hurried back into the parlor. 

" Well boys," said Mr. Brinkley, when he joined them, shortly 
after, " judging by the looks of things outside, and by what we know 
of the real Mexican climate, it doesn 't seem as if this used to be 
Mexico. Brrrrrr ! how cold it must be ! But we have the consola- 
tion of knowing that we shall soon be out of it, and meanwhile this , 
is solid comfort in here, isn 't it, now ? " 

The windows on the northern side were covered with frost. 
Mr. Brinkley, touching an electric button, said, when the jingling 



64 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

call was answered : " George, just bring a little alcohol and rub 
down those windows on this side, so we can see out ! There isn 't 
much to see, just now," he continued, turning to his nephews, " but 
pretty soon we shall have the Rockies in sight for all day from 
that side." 

The windows were soon clear of frost, under George's manipula- 
tion, and it did not reappear. " The alcohol prevents the freezing 
of the moisture which the cold o-lass would otherwise condense from 
the air," Mr. Brinkley explained. 

" That is a pointer worth remembering," said Eliot. 

" It is the way they keep the show-windows of the city shops 
clear on cold winter days, and now I always try it on the cars in 
cold weather, when I want to see out ! " 

" So Mexico used to reach way up here ? " queried Harry. 

" Yes — before our war with Mexico, when we took away so 
large a part of her territory, and before Texas became an independ- 
ent republic, Mexico was one of the largest countries in the world, 
in extent of territory. All of California, New Mexico and Arizona, 
and nearly all of Utah and Nevada, together with the greater part 
of Colorado, beside Texas, belonged to Mexico." 

" There 's one thing to be said in our favor, however," said 

Eliot, " and that is, that if we hadn 't taken that territory, our 

American civilization would not have spread as it has ; all that 

country would liaA^e remained undeveloped, for Mexico hadn 't the 

, means to develop it." 

" Probably not," replied his uncle. " If we had not taken it, it 
would most likely have made the history of the civilized world for 
the past forty years very different from what it is. The Pacific 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



65 



railways would not have been built, a large portion of the immigra- 
tion to this country would have gone to other parts of the world, and 
the relation of the various countries to each other now would there- 
fore be quite different. But the fact that great good has come out 
of it does not make the action of the United States any better ; it 
was an intended piece of wrong-doing on our part, and the real 
object of the Mexican war was to gain possession of all this 
land and so make more room for the extension of slavery. It so 
turned out, though, that slavery did not gain foothold in any of 
the acquired territory, except in Texas, which was already an 
independent State." 

" But as we paid Mexico for the territory very handsomely, it is 
denied that we stole it," said Eliot 

" Yes, that is the way we have tried to ease our national con- 
science, and make good the claim that we have not extended our 
boundaries after the manner of the Old 
World monarchies. But the fact remains, 
the war with Mexico was a war of con- 
quest. That we paid for what we took 
does not alter the case, for we forced 
Mexico to sell. If a man enters your 
house and compels you to make over to 
him a third of your land, holding a pistol 
to your head until you sign the deed, it 
is robbery, even though he pays you the 
fuU value of the property he wants. No, 
my boys, it is not patriotic to try to make 
out that the wrong our country has done 




UNCLE SAM AS A ROBBER. 



66 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

was right. We must look upon our national sins as upon our own ; 
acknowledge them, and do our best to make things go right in the 
future. That is true patriotism. That is the way to make our 
country truly great." 



CHAPTER VII. 

WITH PROW TURNED SOUTHWARD. 

^^T AND ho!" shouted Harry, some little thne after. He had 
been looking intently off towards the right, and now he saw 
off in the distance towards the northwest, a pyramidal mass brightly 
white in the sunshine, against the clear sky ; its base invisible below 
the horizon line. 

" Yes, that is Pike's Peak," said Eliot, looking in the direction 
where Harry pointed. " Now we shall keep within sight of the 
Rockies all the rest of the day, and by noon shall be in amono-st 
them." 

" It seems just like land appearing from out at sea," said Harry, 
gazing at the great peak. " Like the Camden Hills as you approach 
the Pen,obscot Bay, for instance ! " 

" All those mountains had Spanish names, and many of them re- 
main yet," Eliot remarked. " From now on, things will get more 
and more Mexican in character. The Spanish influence shades 
gradually off towards the north. The civilization grows cruder and 
mixes more and more with the Indians, who form the selvao-e, so to 
speak, where the Mexican culture fringes away into the wilderness. 
Even the wild tribes, like the Navajos, Apaches and Utes, have 
some Sj)anish customs, and the few civilized words that they speak 
are Spanish, rather than English. Finally here in the north the 
names of places are all that remain to tell of Spanish occupation. 
When Coronado came up into New Mexico on his march of discov- 

67 



68 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

ery and conquest, he came at least as far as we are now, and by 
many it is thought he went as far as Nebraska. He came in search 
of the ' Seven Cities of Cibola ' of which exaggerated tales were 
brought to Spain, and those seven cities have now been fully iden- 
tified by Frank H. Cushing and Adolph F. Bandelier as the seven 
towns of the Zuni nation that then existed. The name of this State 
is Spanish, you know, and comes from the Colorado river, which 
means ' red.' Some of the people out here call it ' Coloraydo,' mak- 
ing the common English mistake of pronouncing according to the 
spelling, instead of as they hear it. So it happens that people who 
can 't read often get nearer the original pronunciations than those 
who can." 

" I suppose the name of that Ute chief, ' Colorow,' came from 
Colorado," said Harry. 

" Yes, it is the same word. The Spanish pronounce the d, be- 
tween vowels, like th in this, but very lightly, so that in dialects it 
is often dropped out altogether, so that the termination ado becomes 
ao, which has the same sound as ow in how." 

" Here beginneth our first lesson in Spanish ! " said Florence. 

" Yes, and you must keep it up for us right along uoav, Eliot," 
urged Harry. " I noticed," he continued, " that the train-men, at 
the breakfast station this morning, called the place ' La Hunter.' " 

" They get much nearer the right pronunciation in that than in 
Coloraydo or Nevayda. If they would only pronounce the u as in 
bull, or put, they would be almost correct, for the sound of ^ is 
much like that of our h, only more forcible, making it a guttural, 
like the German cA, in ach, and just as our gh used to be in Old 
English." 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



69 



When they came to Trinidad, the great town in southern Colo- 
rado, EHot explained that the termination c?ac? in Spanish had the 
same meaning as ty in English, as in caridad, charity ; amistad, 
amity, etc. And the d, at the end, was spoken like the th in with, 
only very lightly. 

" What a stranpfe-lookino- mountain ! " exclaimed Florence, at 
the sight of the lofty flat-topped elevation, with step-like sides, 
towering grandly above the town. 

" It seems more like a work of art than of nature, — as if it had 
been built- by a race of giants ! " said Florence, and Mr. Brinkley 
told how these me- 
sas, or table-moun- 
tains, were charac- 
teristic of the land- 
scape in New Mexico, 
and some archaeol- 
ogists thought that 
they might have 
given the suggestion 

for the teocalis of the Aztecs, the great pyramid-like mounds with 
terraced sides. Mr. Gushing, in his researches among the Zunis and 
the remains of the ancient inhabitants of Ncav Mexico and Arizona 
has shown how they had their shrines for sacrifice and secret ceremo- 
nials amonof the mountains. He has also shown how the Aztec cult- 
ure must have orig-inated here in the North. Holding" these terraced 
mountains sacred in their traditions the Aztecs might naturally seek 
to imitate them in building great pyramids for places of worship. 

This Trinidad mountain was in the Raton range, over which 
spur of the Rockies, running eastward off into the plains, their 











70 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

southward course now lay. " Raton means mouse," Eliot explained, 
"and ixita is Spanish for rats." They were now in among the foot- 
hills, and were soon climbing a heavy grade, winding tortuously up 
a narrow valley where tall pines were, growing on the brown slopes. 
Here and there, amid cultivated patches, stood the huts of Mexi- 
cans, who still form a considerable element in the population of 
Southern Colorado. " Isn 't that coal ? " asked Harry, pointing to 
long dark streaks in the rock of the ledges through which the way 
was frequently cut. 

" Yes," answered Eliot, " this is one of the best soft-coal regions 
west of the Mississippi; from the other side of the mountain 
thousands of tons of coal are carried way down as far as even the 
City of Mexico every year." 

Their way lay across the shoulder of the mountain they had seen 
towering so high above Trinidad, and now and then they came into 
sight of its flat top, nearer and nearer, ever changing shape according 
to the point of view. The country opened out behind them, and off 
through the valleys the grand panorama of the Rocky Mountains 
became more and more extensive, with a procession of snowy summits 
disappearing into the distance. Nearest of these was the beautiful 
group of Spanish peaks, and, beyond, the Sangre de Cristo Range, 
— the Mountains of the Blood of Christ. 

" Why, what is the matter ? — I feel almost out of breath ! " 
cried Florence. 

" So do I ! " cried Harry, " I feel just as if I had been running a 
foot-race." 

" So say we all of us ! " said Eliot. "It is the altitude. We are 
at a considerable elevation now, and the air is so rare that it takes 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 71 

a much larger measure of it to supply our lungs. If you had got 
off the tram even at La Junta this morning and attempted to run, 
you would have felt the difference. And now we are almost twice 
as high." 

" The two locomotives, one ahead and the other pushing be- 
hind, were puffing rapidly and loudly in their work of getting the 
long train up the steep ascent. " It sounds as if those engines were 
getting out of breath too ! " said Harry. 

" So it does ! " assented Eliot. " I wonder if it has ever been 
figured out," he reflected, " whether there is any material difference 
in making steam at a considerable altitude. You know the evapora- 
tion is so much greater, and water boils at a temperature so much 
lower, that it ought to take a much less quantity of fuel to make a 
given amount of steam. But probably the difference is more 
theoretical than practical,, and so does not come into account. But 
here we are at the summit, seven thousand six hundred and twenty- 
two feet above sea-level." 

"That is, almost a mile and a half perpendicular above the 
Brynhilda," figured Harry. 

" So that, if we could only keep on out into space at this level 
the Ariadne would make a pretty good air-ship ! " observed Mr. 
Brinkley. 

" We are just a little higher at this point than the City of 
Mexico, and the two highest points we reach on our way there, after 
this, are not very much higher than where we are now — Zacatecas, 
eight thousand and sixty-five feet, and Marquez, just outside the 
Valley of Mexico, eight thousand one hundred and thirty-two feet." 

They had come to a stop. As the locomotive in the rear cut 



72 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

loose and backed away, Mabel remarked, " The way that engine 
drops us and backs with a sort of light, happy puff, puff, puff, 
sounds like a sigh of rehef at the end of a hard piece of work. A 
great machine like that really seems as if it must have intelligence 
and sensation of its own ! " 

" I often think it does," said Harry, thoughtfully. " The Bryn- 
hilda actually seems to me as if she were alive." 

" Everything made by human hands is an embodiment of human 
intelligence, just as we living beings are an embodunent of divine 
intelUgence," said Mrs. Brinkley. 

As the train started forward, Eliot pointed to a series of railway 
embankments up the mountain-side to the right. " That is the old 
^ switchback,' " he said. "It was built so that trains could get across 
the mountain while they were building the tunnel. The trains 
would zigzag to and fro on that, switching back and forwards, and 
getting over the mountain that way. They saved several months in 
pushing the line ahead into New Mexico, by that means." 

They plunged into a tunnel, where the darkness seemed to 
last a long time, although in reality it was but a few minutes. 
While passing through, Eliot said : " This is the only tunnel on our 
whole route between Pittsburg and the City of Mexico, and if we 
had gone by way of Washington, New Orleans and Texas, we might 
have taken a route without a single tunnel. I wonder if it would 
be possible to take a railway journey so long in the Old World Avith- 
out a tunnel. It seems remarkable engineering to go the length of 
a mountainous country like Mexico with such light work as that 
proves ! Ah, here we are in New Mexico ! We passed the dividing- 
line in the tunnel. Now let us step out onto the ^ quarter-deck ' for 
a while.' 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 73 

Tliey looked off over a gladdening prospect. The noonday air 
was calm, and in its rare purity it had a pleasant taste like clean 
spring water in the woodland. At the end of the broadening valley, 
away off below, there stretched the vast brown plains of eastern 
New Mexico basking in sunny silence — spreading out to the even 
horizon like the ocean. On the right the chain of the Rockies tended 
southward like the bold coast of a continent. " I declare it seems 
southern already ! " declared Florence. 

" Well," smiled her father, " New Mexico is hardly the land o£ 
bananas or oranges. We are still north of North Carolina, though 
lines of latitude do not tell so much as many other things in the 
matter of climate. Here it is January, and here we are, you have 
just heard how high, and yet it is pleasantly warm out here in the 
air. We have entered the belt of almost perpetual sunshine, and at 
mid-day, even in winter, the temperature is usually agreeably mild. 
But the nights are nipjDing." 

They skirted the chain of the Rockies all day, and constantly 
watched the changing forms of the summits. Sometimes they were 
winding among the foothills, and sometimes far out on the plains, 
where cattle were almost ever in sight, feeding on the cris^), short 
grass, cured into standing hay in that dry air. " I have often seen 
herds of antelope from the train, along here, but they are getting 
rare now and it is doubtful if we would see them anyway, at this 
time of year," said Eliot. " You see those little mounds on the 
plain ? That is a town of prairie-dogs. The merry little creatures 
are now cuddled up fast asleep in their underground houses for the 
winter. If it were summer, you might see them sitting up on those 
hillocks, barking at us as we went by. I can tell you a curious thing 



74 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

about them that you never have seen in any natural history, I '11 
warrant. Every one of these towns has a set of bachelors and old 
maids in the community. All the rest of the inhabitants mate, 
but these refuse to. So the married ones decline to have anything 
to do with them, and make them live off in the outskirts where they 
form little colonies by themselves — sort of monks and nuns ! Frank 
Gushing- told me that one tune, out at Fort Wingate, near Zuni. It 
is a sample of many curious bits of learning he has acquired through 
intimacy with the Indians. I tell you, those sons of Nature have 
a store of facts in Natural History that the scientists have n't caught 
onto yet ! " 

It was after dark when they arrived at the busy city of Las 
Vegas, The Meadows, as Eliot explained it meant. 

" These Spanish names of places seem more poetic than our 
English names," he said, " on account of their more beautiful sound, 
for the language is a noble one with its broad, simple vowels and 
its smooth-flowing character. But in reality, those names are, for 
the most part, just as commonplace as ours. For instance, such 
names as Las Tres Hermanas, the Three Sisters ; El Cerro Blanco, 
the White Hill; El Rio Hondo, the Deep Kiver, are very 
common." 

" It already seems foreign, — this country that we have been 
through today, although it is a part of the United States," said 
Florence. 

" Yes, but it is rapidly getting Americanized now," EKot replied. 
" Ten years ago it seemed as remote from the East as Central 
America does today, and even more unknoAvn. The Mexican popu- 
lation of this territory is still in a considerable majority, but the 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. , 75 

American immigration has been very large since the railways were 
built and a remarkable change has conae over the country. The 
towns along the railway, like Las Vegas and Albuquerque, which 
were previously sleepy and primitive Mexican places, are now as wide- 
awake and go-ahead as our modern towns in the East or West. 
Just look out the window here ! Look at the electric -lights and 
the street-cars, and the substantial business blocks ! And in the 
town you would see many tasteful houses, with nice lawns and gar- 
dens. The uncouthness of the frontier is a rare thing everywhere 
now, and in the most remote States and Territories you will find in 
the leading places, at least, and often in obscure corners of the 
wilderness, all the luxuries and refinements of modern civilization. 
But here in New Mexico, as in some parts of California and Arizona, 
the driving and pushing American life has a stronger effect of new- 
ness, by reason of there being beside it a large and easy-goino- 
Mexican population that retains many of its original traits, although 
clearly influenced by its new surroundings." 

The evening was clear, sharp and cold. From Las Vegas their 
course was westerly for several hours, across the mountains down 
into the valley of the Rio Grande. While Eliot was tellino- them 
stories of New Mexico, with which he was well supplied — the 
romances of treasure-hunting, of Indian-fighting, of the American 
occupation at the time of the Mexican war, of the conquest by the 
Spaniards, accounts of the Pueblo Indians and their strano-e customs 
that he had learned from Gushing and Bandelier and of the pioneer 
days of railway-building — they occasionally looked out into the 
night at the dark masses of the mountains that loomed about them 
as their train toiled slowly up long grades or sped down into lower 
levels. 



76 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

" I suppose New Mexico will soon be a State," said Mr. Brinkley. 
" But it is ridiculous to give it the name of '' Montezuma/ as recently 
proposed. That name, as well as that of ' Aztec,' has been worn 
threadbare in connection with this region. The Indians here were 
not Aztecs, and Montezuma had no more to do with New Mexico 
than he did with New England. The present name is good enough 
for the State, for it is historic and was early given to it by the 
Spaniards." 

" Yes," said Eliot ; " one of the old and principal streets in the 
City of Mexico is the Calle de Nuevo Mexico, or New Mexico 
street." 

" One of the early names given to this region was El nuevo 
reino de San Francisco, (the New Kingdom of San Francisco), and 
it was also known as the Province of Santa Fe, after the Spanish 
custom of usually naming the provinces of Mexico after their chief 
cities," continued Mr. Brinkley. " But, if the name be changed, 
the most appropriate thing would be to call the new State ' Cibola,' 
which would be not only a beautiful name, but appropriate, for it 
was the land of Cibola that Coronado set out in search of on his 
famous march." 

" Do you know Ave are at the southern end of the Rocky Moun- 
tain chain ? " asked Eliot. " This is the Santa Fe Range to the 
right, and southward of here there are no more perpetually snowy 
peaks until we reach the City of Mexico. Santa Fe — la Villa real 
de Santa Fe, the Royal Village of the Holy Faith, as the Spaniards 
call it — nestles beautifully on the table-land at the foot of Old 
Baldy. It is a quaint old place, and I wish you might see it. But 
we might have a pretty cold day up there this tune of year, although 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 77 

the air is glorious. It is almost as high as the City of Mexico, 
though it is much warmer in summer, in sjoite of being almost fifteen 
hundred miles farther north. Or rather, because it is so much 
farther north, since the summer sun stays above the horizon longer, 
and so the earth gets heated up more and cooled off less than in 
the tropics. And then in Mexico the almost daily raiiis in the 
summer cool the air. 

" But, as I was saying, the Rocky Mouncains end here. The 
general mountain system continues southward, but its character 
changes ; the ranges are not continuous. The summits are lower, 
and the mountains are broken up into separate groups, rising from 
the plains like islands from the ocean." 

The next morning they were far down the valley of the Rio 
Grande, but had left the river before daybreak, and when Harry got 
up they were passing over the bare, high plain to the eastward of 
the stream. " This," said Eliot " is the Jornada de 3Iuerte, the 
Journey of Death, as the Spaniards named it, for in the old days, 
the route between the South and Santa Fe lay over this waterless 
plain and often men and animals would perish of thirst." 

The yellowish brown grassy surface was thickly sprinkled with 
dark lumps of lava rock, and the sharp contours of mountain groups 
rose all around, near and far, the higher ones glistening with their 
mantles of winter snow. It was still cold, but not severely so, and 
it seemed like a pleasant morning in late October. As the sun 
mounted in the sky it grew agreeably warm, and it was a pleasure 
to jump down and run about every time the train stopped at the 
stations, where usually there was nothing but water-tanks and the 
houses for the section-hands. 



78 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

" It seems almost pathetic to see these Httle gardens about those 
houses here in the desert," said Mabel, as they noticed the enclosures 
with the remains of what had been summer flowers, cherished 
evidently with tender care, and now withered and rustling in the 
winter wind. 

" But they are a charming sight in summer," said Eliot. " And 
look at those trees ; how they have shot up ! And those great yuccas, 
so much bigger and sturdier than those we see on the plains. It is 
water in abundance that does that, under this sunshine. The rail- 
way water-tanks, where modern skill has sunk wells in the dry desert, 
have made bright little oases in the Journey of Death. You see 
they keep some cattle along the railway line now; there is good 
grass everywhere, but off there a few miles cattle cannot live, for it 
is too far from water," 

At Eincon they descended again into the bottom lands of the Rio 
Grande — broad and level, richly cultivated, with irrigating ditches 
running in every direction and bordered by long lines of great bare 
trees that made Harry think of processions marching across the 
country in single file. Soon they plunged into a range of mountains 
through which the river dashed rapidly in a narrow, wild gorge, the 
track running close beside the stream, at some height above the 
water. On the other side of these mountains they stopped for a few 
minutes at the old military post of Fort Selden, with thick-walled 
buildings of adobe, and Eliot pointed out across the river, just op- 
posite the fort, the heights of Mount Roble, where Prof. Davidson 
observed the transit of Venus in 1882, this clear air offering the 
best opportunity for astronomical observation. 

" RohJe is Spanish for oak, and encina for live-oak, the ever- 
o-reen species that grows in warmer countries," said Eliot. 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 79 

" What does Rincon mean — the name of the junction station 
just before this ? " asked Florence. 

" You pronounce it as if it rhymed with Lincohi," repHed EHot, 
with a laug-h. " It is the rule in Spanish to accent the last syllable 
of Avords ending in consonants. And each vowel has but one sound. 
This is the way : ^in-cone. It means inside corner. Spanish has 
two words for corner, that on the outside of the angle being called 
the esquina (pronounced es-kee-na)." 

They came out into another broad and cultivated plain, bordered 
on the eastward by a range of sharply serrated mountains, — Los 
Organos, so called from their resemblance to organ pipes. " This is 
the Mesilla valley, purchased from Mexico subsequent to the an- 
nexation of New Mexico, under the Gadsden treaty. It is very fer- 
tile, as you can see by the way it is cultivated. Before the purchase 
the boundary line ran just the other side of the town of Las Cruces, 
this station where we are stopping now. There were many patriotic 
Mexicans here who objected to living under the American flag and 
so they went across the line and settled the pretty town of Mesilla, 
on the opposite side of the Rio Grande. But fate was against them ; 
when this Gadsden strip was annexed they were brought into the 
United States again. A few years ago the course of the river 
changed during a season of high water, so that one mornino- the 
people woke up and found their town on this side of the stream ! " 

" So if they hadn't been annexed by treaty. Nature would have 
annexed them ! " remarked Mabel. 

" by no means ! " replied her brother. " The original river- 
bed would still have been the boundary. But that is one of the 
inconveniences of making a river a political division line. It is 



80 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YAOHT. 



not a natural boundary ; for a river, instead of separating the people 
living- on opposite sides, unites their interests by giving them a 
common channel of transportation. Then, as we have seen, a stream 
by changing its course is apt to produce a confusion in the distinction 
of boundaries. The Mississippi, for instance, has shifted its bed so 

much that many portions of the east 
bank are in Arkansas. Vicksburof has 
been chanofed over to the west shore 
since the war. But by looking at the 
ordinary maps you would never think 
the river had made such a confusion 
in State lines." 

A little later they were traversing 
a wild plain where the light sandy 
soil was blown into bunchy hillocks, 
with a shrubby growth protruding 
from the top of each. " That bush is 
mesquite," said Eliot. " It usually grows like any other tree, but 
here it chiefly runs to roots, on account of the sand covering it up. 
So the people around here dig their fuel very much as they would 
potatoes. There's one of them now ! " and he pointed to a Mexican 
driving a donkey along near the track ; the little beast toiling 
along with a load of mesquite-roots tied onto his back almost as big 
as himself. " He's been working his wood-mine, you see." 

" That sort of firewood would please the old woman who said 
she liked the crooked sticks because they curled around the pot so 
beautifully," said Mabel. 

"Ah, here Ave are in Texas!" exclaimed Eliot, - jjointing to a 
boundary j^ost. 




THE CRUISE OF A LAND- YACHT. 81 

" It seems queer that we should strike the first really Southern 
State in our journey way out here at this extreme corner of it, close 
to Mexico ! " said Harry. 

" How about Missouri ? " asked Mabel. 

" 0, that doesn't count. . Although it was a slave State, we 
always think of it as Western, rather than Southern. And Kansas 
City is decidedly western ! " 



CHAPTER VIII. 

ON THE FRONTIER, TO AND FRO. 

^^ 1\T OW for your first look at Mexico ! " and Eliot pointed towards 
a dark line of highlands to the southward, with mountains 
ranging- off bluely beyond. " Do you see that monument ? That 
marks the boundary, and beyond that the right bank of the Rio 
Grande is Mexican all the way to the Gulf, — except in a few spots 
where the river has changed its course." 

The valley narrowed and the mountains on either side drew 
nearer together, with the river flowing between, the banks rising 
into high cliffs on either side. On the other bank they saw the line 
of a railway winding along on a shelf on the face of the bluff, like 
their own track on this shore. Just below the obelisk that was 
standing high above, the line made a leap across the river on a sub- 
stantial iron bridge to their own side, and kept along parallel with 
their track and several feet below their level. " That is the Southern 
Pacific," said Eliot. " It keeps along that side of the river up to 
within a few yards of the boundary, and then crosses to this bank to 
avoid entering Mexican territory." 

A few miles more and they drew into the station at El Paso. 
" Just on time to a dot ! " cried Harry, looking at his watch and 
finding it ten minutes of one, as they came to a standstill. 

" We are in luck," said Eliot. " Two or three hours behind is 
nothing uncommon on these long-distance routes. We wait here 

82 



THE CRUISE OP A LAND-YACHT. 83 

some little time before we cross the river, I believe, and our train 
doesn't pull out for Mexico until quarter past five. What do you 
say to getting out and taking that street-car, and going ' By Horse- 
car to Mexico,' as ' H. H.' calls that interesting sketch of this 
place." 

" That would be fun — but no ! It would never do for us not 
to enter Mexico in our own yacht ! " cried his sister. 

" Yes, we must stick to the Ariadne on a solemn occasion like 
this ! " said Harry. " To cross over in a horse-car that isn't even a 
horse-car, for it is drawn by mules, would be like going in a common 
punt." 

" Besides, it's dinner time," said Mabel. 

" I'll tell you what," suggested Eliot, " we shall have plenty of 
time, so when we have got over there we can come back to ^ the 
States ' by street-car and return again to Mexico. In that way we 
can see somethintr of the two cities." 

o 

While they were at dinner they were taken across the river by a 
switching-engine, together with the Pullman and baggage-car of the 
train, so that a transfer could be conveniently made by the passen- 
gers. They looked down into the swift and shallow stream rolling 
turbidly beneath them as they crossed the bridge, in the centre of 
which Eliot called : " Now we are in Mexico ! " 

" Hurrah ! " shouted Harry. 

" Just think, we are really abroad, in a foreign country, without 
crossing the ocean ! " said Florence. 

" And you a yachtsman at that, and never sailed as far as Nova 
Scotia, or even New Brunswick, making your first cruise abroad 
overland in a land-craft ! " said Eliot to Harry, teasingly. 



84 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

" Well children, how does it make you feel to be in a foreign 
land? " asked Mr. Brinkley. 

" Pretty well excited, evidently ! " said his wife, enjoying- the 
expressions of their glowing faces and sparkling eyes. 

" At any rate, you must spare time to eat some of this in honor 
of the event," Mr. Brinkley said, as George set before them a dish 
of ice-cream ornamentally arranged, while Sam's dark face appeared 
in the doorway to observe the effect of his device, his mouth ex- 
panded into a delighted grin at sight of their evident approval. 

" An arrangement in green, white and red — the Mexican colors ! 
Good for you Sam ; you're an artist ! 

They drew up at the station, and saw that the crowd on the 
platform was truly foreign in character. There was a multitude of 
Mexicans looking impassively on at the tram ; men with gay-hued 
blankets about their shoulders and women with thin black shawls 
enfolding their heads and hiding their mouths — all swarthy, with 
dark eyes, while now and then there was a flash of gleaming teeth. 
Sprinkled among them were the stalwart figures of young Americans, 
mostly brown-haired and with clear blue eyes ; their faces tanned to 
a hue almost rivalling that of the Mexicans. They were mostly 
railroad men, and they moved actively to and fro in the crowd, 
giving and taking orders. Here and there was a slouching, slinking 
figure, with unkempt hair and beard the color of dusty hay — the 
typical tramp and bummer from across the border. There were also 
some natty looking men in uniforms, with a decidedly foreign 
air. 

" Now for the custom-house ordeal ! " said Mr. Brinkley. 

" Let me look out for that," said Eliot, and he greeted one of 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 85 

the uniformed officials who appeared at the door with a cordial 
" Buenos dias, Senor ! " (Good day to you, sir !) 

" Buenos dias ! " he replied ; " Dispensenme Ustedes, pero yo 
soy un oficial del aduana, y — " (Pardon me, your excellencies, 
but I am a customs officer and — ) 

" Usted tiene el deber de examinar nuestro equipaje, no es verdad? 
Pues es una honra^ ensenarselo. Nunca molest a una visita de un 
caballero como Usted. Al contrario, siempre es ocasion muy grato ! " 
(You have the duty of examining- our baggage, have you not ? It 
is an honor to show it. The visit of a gentleman like yourself is 
never a molestation. On the contrary, it is always a very pleasant 
occasion.) 

The official beamed in reply : " Usted es muy amable." (You are 
very amiable.). 

" Um puro( habanero, senor ? " and Eliot tendered a cigar, which 
the officer accepted with a " Muchas gracias ! " (many thanks.) 

" Pero que trastornada esta la poblacion esta — y mejorada 
tambien ! " Eliot went on. " Toda esa corre por cuenta de la presencia 
de Usted y los demas oficiales, creo ! " (But how transformed is 
this place — and improved also ! All that is on account of the 
presence of you officials, I believe.) 

" No tanto, no tanto, senor ! Viene de la prosperidad introducido 
por el ferrocarrill lo cual debemos a los paisanos suyos, los Ameri- 
canos." (Not so much as that, not so much as that, sir ! It comes 
from the prosperity introduced by the railway^ for which we are in- 
debted to your countrymen, the Americans.) 

" Y con la prosperidad vienen los officiales caballerosos — es 
verdad ! Pero le estoy deteniendo a Usted. Yamos a ver las 



86 THE CRUISE OP A LAND-YACHT. 

cosas ! " (And with the prosperity the gentlemanly officials — it is 
true ! But I am detaining you. Let us look at the things !) 

"No hay caso, seiior ! Ustedes son excursionistas y — " 
(There is no occasion, sir ! You are excursionists, and — ) 

" Es cierto que no tenemos mercancias. Es Usted muy cabellero" 
(It is true we have no merchandise. You are very much of a 
gentleman, sir.) 

" Es nada, sehor ! Pero que carro tan hermoso es este ! Es un 
verdadero palacio ! " (It is nothing, sir ! But what a beautiful car 
is this ! It is a genuine palace !) said the official, looking around 
admiringly. 

" Si tenga Usted tiempo, hagame el favor de acompaiiarme para 
que se lo ensena a Usted. Seria para mi una placer indecible." 
(If you have tune, do me the favor of accompanying me to look it 
over ; it would be a great pleasure for me.) 

When Eliot had finished his tour of insj)ection Avith the official 
he sat down with him to a dish of the ice-cream, whose Mexican 
tri-coloring touched his patriotic soul. Then taking a very formal 
farewell on the platform, with repeated assurances of regard 
from both sides, Eliot returned to his friends and was greeted by 
his uncle with an admiring " Bravo my boy ! You carried us 
over that finely ! " 

" 0, there is nothing like courtesy with these people ! Rude- 
ness is ahnost a cardinal sin in Mexico. And it is charming 
to see the gentleness of conduct, the respect for another's per- 
sonality, which marks the intercourse of all classes in this 
country. Here at the custom-house, although they pile on the 
duties unmercifully in the case of freight, they are very considerate 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



87 



in the treatment of passengers, and, as you have just seen, they 
appreciate a courteous bearing on the part of Americans. 

" But speaking of the custom-house, reminds me of a story that 
Mackenzie, recently general superintendent of the Mexican Central, 
told me of the time when his headquarters were here. This place 
is in the Zona libre, the Free Zone, noAv, but then the belt had not 
been extended up the river to this point. The free zone is a strip 
of territory along the border within which, under a law of Mexico, 
there is free trade with foreign countries. European goods are now 

sold in this place, brought 
through our country in bond, at 
almost European prices, and 
there is naturally a good deal 
of smuggling back to the 
American side. But as to 
Mack's story. An Irish loco- 
motive engineer, in charge of a 
switching-engine like the one 
that brought us across the river, 
was compelled by his duties to 
live on this side of the river. 
He wanted a cook-stove, and 
came to Mackenzie asking per- 
mission to import it with the 
railway material, which comes in 
duty free. But the company has to be very strict in such matters, 
being under Mexican laws, and so Mackenzie felt obliged to refuse. 
So the man undertook the responsibility of smuggling it over him- 




88 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

self. The duty on such a thing is so much a kilogram, which would 
make its cost enormous on this side, although stoves were cheap 
enough in El Paso. But they are almost unknown in Mexico, and 
hardly one Mexican in a hundred thousand would know the differ- 
ence between a cook-stove and a dynamo. The engineer bought 
his stove and had it brought down to the yard on the American 
side, where he set it up in front of his engine, with a section of 
smoke-pipe attached. He then kindled a fire in it and started 
for Mexico. At the station here the custom-house man came 
around as usual, peered into the cab on the lookout for contraband 
packages, and meanwhile the engineer was going the usual rounds 
of his locomotive, oiling up. In front the cook-stove was pouring a 
lively stream of black smoke from its pipe. The engineer solemnly 
looked it over, took off a cover and gave the fire a poke, took off 
another and repeated the operation, and then, in a most professional 
manner, carefully oiled the hinges of the oven door ! His ruse was 
successful, and the custom-house man had no suspicion that the 
stove was not some kind of an attachment to the engine. Machinery 
comes into Mexico duty free, and there was a certain mining 
company up in the Sierra Madre that wanted a cooking-range for its 
camp headquarters. The duties on it would have amounted to a 
thousand dollars, or more, and so it was imported under the head of 
' mining-machinery,' and at the custom-house they were none the 
wiser." 

" Well, as we have plenty of time, let us take a trip back to the 
United States," said Mr. Brinkley. 

" It does indeed seem foreign here," Mabel remarked, as they 
were on their way in the street-car. One wouldn't think there would 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 89 

be such a difference just across the river. There is that massive- 
looking railway station, built about an open court ; all these adobe 
buildings, those signs in Spanish over the doors, and nearly all the 
jDeople we meet ! " 

" Yes, but it is a sort of frontier foreignness," said Eliot, with a 
shade of contempt in his voice. " Just wait till we get well down 
into Mexico ! " 

" It seems really Southern, at any rate," said Florence. " It is 
so warm in this air that my clothing feels altogether too heavy." 

" Nothing particularly tropical about the vegetation, however ! " 
replied Eliot. The trees were all bare, and the garden plants about 
the houses had a dry and frost-stricken look. But there were a few 
hardy flowers blooming, and there were some Southern-looking 
shrubs with green leaves. " Now and then, in winter, there are sev- 
eral inches of snow here, but it doesn 't stay on the ground long," 
EHot went on. " We are in about the latitude of Montgomery and 
Savannah, but we are still two thousand seven hundred and seventeen 
feet above the sea." 

" What a long way from home we are ! And yet we have spent 
but five nights on the car," Mrs. Brinkley remarked. 

" Is that all ? " cried Harry. " Why I feel as if I had been liv- 
ing on the Ariadne a month or two already ! " 

"Just how far have we come?" asked Florence. 

" Let 's see," responded Eliot, " we are just one thousand six 
hundred and thirty miles from Chicago, and so we have come nearly 
three thousand miles altogether, from Boston to the boundary." 

" I 'm sure I don 't see anything very ' grandy ' about the river," 
exclaimed Harry, looking down from the bridge as they crossed, 



90 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

upon the turbid waters running swiftly over wide, flat expanses of 
sand. " Why, see that cart down there in the middle of the stream 
crossing over with the water only just over the hubs ! " 

Eliot answered : " And yet I saw it over twenty feet deep at this 
point when I came north in July. It kept that way nearly three 
months, there had been so much snow in the Rockies the winter be- 
fore. It washed away the railroad bridge here, and we had to cross 
in a skiff. It washed away miles and miles of the Santa Fe tracks 
in New Mexico and Texas. It was a river not to be sneezed at, 
then!" 

" And in length it is certainly worthy of its name," said Mr. 
Brinkley. " Just think, its source is way up in the Rockies of 
Southern Colorado, and it is a clear mountam stream the first hun- 
dred miles, or so." 

" The Mexicans call it the Rio Bravo from here down to the 
Gulf. That would make it mean swift river, but I have heard it 
said that the name was given in honor of General Bravo, one of the 
heroes of their struggle for independence. But," continued Eliot, 
" Rio Grande does not mean grand river, but great river. In Span- 
ish the meaning of the adjective is modified, according as it comes 
before, or after the noun. When the adjective comes first, its 
meaning is figurative, and when it follows its noun, it is literal. If 
it were the Grand River, its Spanish name would be El Gran Bio.'" 

On the brido^e an American customs-officer had boarded the car, 
and poked about among the parcels of the passengers, looking with 
much suspicion on some, asking mmute questions, and notifying 
others that they must go to the custom-house with hmi to have the 
packao-es that they carried passed upon. " That business has to be 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 91 

gone through with, clay in and day out, on every street-car that 
passes from the Mexican side across to El Paso," said Ehot. "They 
are fearfully strict here, for there is a dealer in Mexican curios in 
El Paso who complains if anybody brings in duty free so much as a 
ten-cent ornament from the other side. He wants everybody com- 
pelled by law to patronize his shop." 

" This place seems as American as the other does Mexican," Mrs. 
Brinkley remarked, as the street-car rolled at a leisurely pace 
through the modern, wide-awake looking city, with large and sub- 
stantial business structures, and many handsome dwellings with 
pleasant grounds. " What a contrast from that time you brouo-ht 
me down here with you in July, '81, Uncle Lemuel, just after the 
Santa Fe had built its track into the place, and the Mexican Central 
was just beginning work from this end southward," said Eliot. 
" The place was mean, slouchy and tough. Only a few weeks be- 
fore, the * rustlers ' had full sway and sometimes there were several 
murders in one day. The only hotel was the nastiest den I ever 
saw, and we nearly starved the one day we spent here. Now look 
at those fine large hotels, supplied with every convenience, and see 
how the town has spread far out into the desert." 

" Even tliiOugh I knew that five railroads meeting here could not 
help making it an important point, I felt in all that heat and dirt 
and dust that I wouldn 't give ten dollars for the whole place," Mr. 
Brinkley added. " But they were preparing for the future then, 
and although it made me laugh to see the plans posted around 
showing all that gravelly cactus desert laid out into fine streets and 
house-lots, they have been pretty well realized now. It gives one 
an idea of the way our country is developing, and of the tremendous 



92 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

energy and power of the American people, to travel anywhere now- 
a-days, north, south, east or west, and see the changes of even two 
or three years." 

" These little coops of wooden houses where the great mass of 
people live seem to be of the same pattern everywhere in the West, 
don 't they ? " Mabel remarked. " In their size they seem to be so 
at variance with the Western standards of bigness concerning about 
everything else. In the East they would be considered hardly fit for 
anything more than hen-houses ! I don 't see how they stand it in 
the summers of a climate like this." 

" Such houses are hot as blazes, almost ! " Eliot answered. " The 
people stew, fry, roast, and fricasee themselves by living in them. 
Nothing could be more unfit for this climate. The thick earthen 
walls of an adobe house give as much coolness as possible, but there 
is such a prejudice against anything that is Mexican that wood is 
considered the respectable thing for building, and so the average 
American here sticks to it ! " 

On their return to the Mexican side, Mr. Brinkley told them 
how the two towns used to have the same name, " El Paso 
del Norte," meaning the northerly pass, or crossing of the Rio 
Grande. The Mexican town was the principal place, and on the 
Texan side there was a wretched little hamlet only. But as the 
latter grew, it took on the name of El Paso, while the original 
place became known as Paso del Norte. But lately, to avoid con- 
fusion, the Mexicans had renamed their place, and it was uoav called 
Ciudad Juarez, or Juarez City. It was an appropriate name, for it 
was here that the great statesman, the famous president of Mexico 
from the tune of the civil war of Reform down through the rule of 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 93 

Maximilian as emperor, was driven when his fortunes were at their 
lowest. Two great achievements therefore gave him high rank as 
a patriot, the reconstruction of the Mexican form of government on 
liberal principles, and the ridding of his country of foreign in- 
vaders. Juarez maintained the seat of republican government here 
at this place for some time, and never was driven to take refuge on 
American soil, although prepared to in case of necessity. All 
through Maximilian's reign he never ceased to act as president of 
the republic in some portion of the country. 

" It should never be forgotten," said Eliot, " that Juarez, whom 
William H. Seward declared was one of the greatest of modern 
statesmen, was a full-blooded Indian, as you may see by any of the 
portraits so common in Mexico. It is well to remember that, as well 
as the fact that Mexico is really an Indian republic, with something 
hke nine-tenths of Indian blood in its population, when we hear any 
one discussing the Indian question and saying the Indians are in- 
capable of civilization." 

" Why, our own ancestors fifteen hundred years ago were the 
savages of Northern Europe, as wild as any North American Indians 
today," Mr. Brinkley asserted. " And the Aztecs and ancient 
Peruvians were Indians, developing what might have been a high 
order of civilization of their own when the Spanish conquerors came 
and extinofuished it. The Aztec calendar was more accurate than 
that of their Spanish conquerors, and must have been founded on a 
more extensive astronomical knowledge." 

" B-r-r-r ! It is getting chilly ! " exclaimed Florence, as they 
came within sight of the train made up at their station, Avith the 
white Ariadne in the rear, contrasting Avith the dark Pullman just 
ahead. " I didn't look for this from Mexico ! " 



94 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

The sky had been gradually becoming overcast. It was now 
quite gray, and a raw wind had begun to blow from the north. " A 
hint, not exactly gentle, for us to withdraw from the frontier ! " Mr. 
Brinkley remarked, with a laugh. 

Harry went with Eliot to look at the train, with its Spanish 
words on the cars and the locomotive ; " Ferrocarril Central Mexi- 
cano " (Mexican Central Railway), and " Carro Dormitorio Pullman" 
on the Pullman Sleeping car, while the three passenger-coaches were 
rano-ed from front to rear in the order of third, second, and first- 
class, respectively, after the manner of European railways, though 
American in style of construction. 

The bell rang, the conductor shouted the equivalent for " All 
aboard !" " Ya vamonos," (Now we go !) and the train began to 
move southward in the gathering dusk. The cosy, brilliantly lighted 
interior of the Ariadne never seemed more home-like. 

" We are running on City of Mexico tune now," said Eliot. 
" This makes the third time to change our watches since we started. 
An hour slower at Pittsburg, another hour slower at Dodge City in 
Kansas for Mountain time, and now twenty-four minutes forward 
again — a net difference of one hour and twenty-three minutes 
slower than our Eastern time." 

" That's because we have to go eastward again, I suppose ! " said 
Harry. 

" Yes," Eliot replied, " we have come westward to the backbone 
of the continent and are now following it southeastward down to the 
capital. You know the standard time in our country is that of the 
respective meridians, or very near the meridians, of Philadelphia, St. 
Louis, Denver, and that of the line between California and Nevada, 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 95 

which are each fifteen degrees apart, making- a difference of an hour 
in the time of each. Our last standard was that of Mountain Time, 
reckoned by the one hundred and fifth meridian, which is that of 
Denver. The meridian of the Mexican capital, whose time standard 
is for all the railways of this country, is the ninety-ninth, which makes 
just twenty-four minutes difference, there being a change of four 
minutes to a degree." 

" That is a good thing to remember, that four minutes to a 
degree business," said Harry. 

" How far is it to the City of Mexico ? " Florence asked. 

" Nineteen hundred and seventy-three kilometers, or twelve 
hundred and twenty-three and one-half miles." 



CHAPTER IX. 



IlSr A FOREIGN LAND. 



TJARRY was up by daylight the next morning, looking out over 
^ ^ the country. The air was sharp when he stepped out onto the 
"quarter-deck," but he wrapped himself in his thick coat and watched 
the track slip away behind the train, mostly in long lines of arrow- 
like straightness for miles and miles, sometimes rising gradually up 
an even incline, and again descending into the distance, while the 
slower motion and rapid puffing of the locomotive indicated that 
they were running up a grade. A broad plain on either side ex- 
tended away to the feet of long chains of serrated mountains that 
drew nearer and nearer together as the train advanced, until they 
almost met, leaving a narrow valley for the passage of the railway, 
and then they gradually fell away again. The plain was well 
covered with crisp, brown grass, and there were few trees to be seen, 
except a leafless clump about some white-walled, fortress-like enclosure 
visible in the distance at rare intervals. The mountains were 
bare in their sharp outlines. There was a certain general resemblance 
to the New Mexican landscape of the day before, but Harry's keen 
and observing young eyes noted many marked differences that gave 
it a distinct character. " Those yuccas are much larger than those 
we saw yesterday ; I suppose that comes from our being so much 
farther south, doesn't it?" he said to Eliot, Avho had joined him. 
He pointed to the great plants dotted here and there all over the 

96 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 97 

plains, with their sharp leaves growing in bristling clusters at the 
end of their thick stalks, several feet from the ground. 

" Yes," replied Eliot, " but tomorrow you will see them growing 
in regular forests, and large trees in size ; thirty and forty feet high. 
I wish you might see them in blossom — but perhaps you will be- 
fore we get back. Do you notice those great dry spikes on some of 
the plants, like little sticks tied on ? They are the remains of last 
year's flowers and seeds. They call the yucca the Palmilla (pro- 
nounced pal-ndl-ya) here. The roots make a perfect natural soap. 
The women pound them and bruise them with stones, and then stir 
them around in water, making a thick lather, which washes cloth 
wonderfully clean. Amole [ah-mo-lay) they call the roots. It is 
the finest thing for washing the hair, leaving it soft and silky ; not 
in the least harsh and dry, as does soap." 

" Here we are stopping at this water-tank ; let 's jump off and 
get a root to use in the bath tomorrow," suggested Harry, alert 
to try everything new. 

They rushed for the nearest yucca and tugged frantically, with 
httle avail until a handsome, brown-faced youth, who had been 
looking smilingly on from the station platform, came to their assist- 
ance, and easily extricated it from the earth. " Mil gracias, amigo ! 
Usted tiene la habilidad de un dentista ! " (A thousand thanks, 
friend ! You have the skill of a dentist ! ) said Eliot, taking out a 
quarter and handing it to him. But the young fellow courteously 
refused the money : " De nada, sefior ; no acepto dinero j:)or eso ! 
Basta el placer de recibir las apreciaciones amistosas de Ustedes ! " 
(It is nothing, sir ; I do not take money for that ! Sufficient is the 
pleasure of receiving your friendly appreciation.) 



98 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

At this charming reply EKot gave a frank laugh and said, in 
English, " Well, my boy, you are a regular white man ! " while 
Harry extending his hand and saying nothing, hut speaking thanks 
with his eyes, rushed into the car and in a moment reappeared on 
the " quarter-deck " as the train began to move away. He had 
snatched from the table a couple of beautiful great red New Eng- 
land apples, and tossed them toward the young Mexican one after 
the other, the latter catching them with sparkling eyes and a pleased 
laugfli, 

" Mercy, what have you there ? " exclaimed Mabel, who mean- 
while had appeared with Florence, as Eliot entered with the yucca. 

" A sample of native soap, with scrubbing-brush attached ! " re- 
plied her brother. 

" Why, those leaves are like daggers, their points are so sharp ! " 
cried Florence, shrinking from the touch of one of them. 

" They call it the Spanish bayonet on our side of the line," 
said Eliot. " When my friend Fletcher of Santa Fe was special 
agent for the Interior Department he once made a trip across 
country in Southern New Mexico. One of the two mules hitched 
to his buck-board was so inclined to loaf that the other one did 
nearly all the pulling. So the next day he hit on the expedient of 
lashing one of these yucca heads to the whiffle-tree just back of 
the lazy beast. As soon as she began to loaf she felt a gentle 
reminder from behind that made her spring forward with remark- 
able energy. All the rest of that day she was the smartest ivaile in 
the Territory, and her mate had an easy time of it." 

" I see that it says kilometers, instead of miles, on all these dis- 
tance posts along the track," said Harry, 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 99 

" Yes ; the metric system is the standard in Mexico, as in nearly 
all civilized countries except our own and the other English-speak- 
ing nations of the world. It ought to be everywhere, it is so simple 
and convenient. Really I can 't for the life of me remember the 
various tables of weights and measures — Apothecaries' weight, 
Troy weight, etc., — that I learned by rote at school, except the few 
simple things I have constantly had to apply in practice. But the 
metric system, with its uniform decimals, once learned cannot easily 
be forgotten." 

" I haven 't the slightest idea of a kilometer," said Mabel. 

" But it is the easiest thing to get an idea of," her brother re- 
plied. " American civil engineers coming here take to the standard 
at once ; it would save us lots of time and bother if Ave could only 
use it at home entirely. A kilometer is, in round numbers, just 
about five-eiofhths of a mile. It is about the distance one Avould 
walk in fifteen minutes, going at the ordinary gait of most people. 
A kilometer a minute is also about the average speed of an express 
tram. 

" Three hundred and fifty-six kilometers," Harry read from a 
post as they sped by. 

Eliot jumped up. " Well ! " he exclaimed, " we had better be 
on the lookout ! Yes, there it is — that's Chihuahua ! " and he 
pointed across the plain, where at the feet of mountains rising 
abruptly, with outlines resembling cumulus clouds, there spread a 
considerable mass of buildings, with domes and towers here and 
there, and, above the rest, two stately twin church-towers, gilded by 
the rays of the early sun. They all looked with eager interest at 
their first large Mexican city. 



100 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

" It is 361.8 kilometers, or just two hundred and twenty-four 
miles, from Ciudad Juarez ; a few miles more than between New 
York and Boston," said EHot, looking at the distance on a railway 
" folder " that he had supplied hunself with. 

" Why, it looks really European — it doesn't seem as if it could 
be on this continent ! " Mabel said. 

" Just examine those towers through this field-glass," said EHot. 
" It will bring them very near. Suppose you take the first peep, 
Florence ! " 

" how beautiful ! What rich stone-carving ! " 

" I wish you might see it close at hand. It is a beautiful struct- 
ure. Strangers call it the cathedral, usually, but it reaUy is the 
parochial church, for there is no bishop in Chihuahua. It is large 
enough for a cathedral, though." 

" What a pity we are not going to stop over here ! " 

" It almost seems so, but there are so many things to see, and 
your father thought that we had better make right for the heart of 
Mexico, where we would find the richest and most interesting part 
of the country — more than we could exhaust in one season's trip — 
besides enjoying at once a climate of either perfect sprmg or perfect 
summer, just as we wished. But it would be worth while to see this 
place just as I did the first time. The railway had been opened 
here but a few weeks. It was the last of November, and I came 
down Avith a party of friends from Santa Fe, where snow then 
covered the ground. At Paso del Norte it was like early October at 
home, but here it was like early September, with a soft, summerish 
air, the trees full green. Although nearly a thousand feet higher 
than the elevation at the boundary, it is so much farther south that 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 101 

it makes a marked difference in the climate. But now, you see, it 
looks about as winterish as it does there, and they have considerable 
snow here at times. We arrived here by moonlight, and it was a 
full moon, too. It seemed like an enchanted spectacle as we 
wandered through the streets that evening, with the white light 
pouring in a flood over the strange architecture. All these State 
capitals in Mexico are interesting places, and you can see that they 
are little centres in themselves. 

" Chihuahua has a place of some importance in Mexican history. 
It was founded through the discovery of rich silver mines around 
here ; those of Santa Eulalia, which are now exhausted. But with 
the railway the city has become a trade-centre for mining-districts all 
through northern Mexico. It was here that Hidalgo, the patriot 
priest who started the Mexican struggle for independence, was 
finally captured and shot by the Spaniards, with several other lead- 
ers in the revolution. Under the Maximilian empire, the French 
troops were in possession for a time, and the place was besieged by 
the Republican forces and bombarded ; some of the marks may still 
be seen on those towers, and one of the bells has a hole shot through 
it." 

All the rest of the day they sped southward through a thinly 
populated country, treeless, sunny and dry. " Only for a few weeks 
in the summer, when the rains come, the grass is green all over these 
desolate plains, and flowers spring up on every hand. But rains 
are uncertain here in northern Mexico, and some years there are 
almost none at all," said Mr. Brinkley. 

" It does seem to be a thorough desert, for the most part, but if 
we look at it rightly, we will find it full of interest and even beauty," 



102 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

said his wife. " I love to watch these tawny plains, flooded with 
pure, clear sunshine, shelving- away, inclining gradually upward here 
and downward there, spread with a soft blue veil of haze in the far 
distance. And then the mountains ever in sight, changing in form 
almost imperceptibly as we pass, rugged and sharp in this transpar- 
ent air, with shadows shifting as the day advances, and clothed in 
wonderful violet and purple lights that make one think the atmos- 
phere here has prismatic properties. A book like this '■ Bits of Travel 
at Home ' by 'H.H.,' teaches us to find beauty even in the common- 
place and in what most people find wholly dreary. Here is 
that delicate passage of hers about the sage-brush of the desert, seen 
from the car-window. And the exquisiteness of this description of 
the sand with its ripples, blown about the street in San Francisco ! " 

At about ten o'clock they entered the valley of the Rio Conchas 
and followed its richly cultivated bottom-lands until they left 
Jimenez, where their train stopped for dinner, shortly after midday. 
Outside it was now so hot in the blazing sunlight as to be almost 
oven-like. Harry reported the Pullman passengers as fairly swelter- 
ing with the heat. " Touch first this car, and then the Ariadne," 
said his uncle, going outside with him at a station. Harry found 
that the dark side of the Pullman, exposed to the sun, was almost 
burning hot, while the white surface of their own was cool. 

" What a difference ! " Harry exclaimed. 

" Yes, this white paint and the double roof make all the differ- 
ence between comfort and misery. We have had the windows 
closed to keep out both dust and heat, and you see how agreeable 
the temperature has been. The ventilating fans have given us good 
air, and the only trouble has been from the dust that would get in, 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 103 

in spite of our arrangement of fine wire screens to keep it out/' 
" What clouds of dust the train raises at some of these 
stretches ! " 

" YeSj that is the greatest discomfort attending travel in a 
country like this, with long months of rainless weather. Even a 
climate of perpetual sunshine has its drawbacks. As for dust, there 
is a fine field for some invention that will keep it entirely out of cars 
while ventilating them thoroughly. If all railways could be 
thoroughly ballasted with rock, there would be little bother from 
dust." 

It was growing dark when Eliot told them that they had passed 
out of the great State of Chihuahua — in territory the largest of the 
twenty-six forming the federal republic of JMexico — into the State 
of Durango. During the night they would cut across the north- 
eastern corner of Durango and the southeastern corner of Coahuila, 
and in the morning they would find themselves more than half-way 
across Zacatecas. " We are entering the rich Laguna region now," 
said he. " Fifteen years ago, or so, this was an almost uninhabited 
wilderness, an arid waste. But some considerable streams flow down 
from the mountains here, and from great shallow lakes, or lagoons, 
and it was found that the land, irrigated from these streams, was re- 
markably fertile and particularly fitted for raising cotton and grapes. 
Vast areas have been brought under cultivation, the use of the 
water from the streams for irrigation has almost dried up the 
lagoons by witholding their supply, and their beds are now cotton 
fields. The trade-centre of the region. Villa Lerdo, where the train 
stops for supper, did not exist fifteen years ago, and is now a busy 
city of fifteen or twenty thousand inhabitants. Large fortunes have 



104 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

been made in cotton-raising here in the past few years, and the 
country has grown as if it were in our own West." 

" How much warmer it is than it was last night at this time ! " 
said Florence. 

" That is because we are not only nearly five hundred miles 
further south, but only a few feet above the same altitude as El 
Paso," explained Eliot. " This region is the lowest part of the line 
between the frontier and the capital, after leaving the Rio Grande." 



CHAPTER X. 



ACROSS THE TROPIC OF CANCER. 




'I ^7" HEN Harry awoke the 
next morning Eliot 
told him that they were 
again over a mile above the 
sea-level. " We are just in 
the tropics," he said. " I£ 
you had been up a little 
earlier you might have seen 
the 25oint where we cross 
the Tropic of Cancer." 

At the breakfast-table 
they were talking about 
being inside the Torrid Zone, and Florence remarked that the country 
did not look a bit more tropical than that of the day before. Mr. 
Brinkley said that of course all the territory within the tropics was 
tropical, strictly speaking, but in the common use of the term only 
the warm country, where the luxuriant vegetation flourished, was 
called tropical. " Here on the table-lands within the tropics is the 
true ' Temperate Zone,' for the climate is always mild and even at 
all seasons. What is called the Temperate Zone is really the Intem- 
perate Zone, with its sudden and violent changes of temperature and 
weather, not only from season to season, but from day to day." 

105 



106 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

" What a fine idea it would be," said Eliot, " for the railway 
company to mark the exact spot where its Hne crosses the Tropic of 
Cancer, and run a line of prominent stones out into the plain on 
either side, with some inscription and the zodiacal sign of Cancer, 
the Crab, close at hand. Tourists would get interested to see the 
place, and things pay that interest the tourist." 

" That reminds me," Mr. Brinkley observed, " that my friend 
Mr. Frederic E. Church, the famous painter, told me the last tune 
I was in Mexico how he took breakfast on the Equator. He was 
with Mr. Cyrus W. Field, making a tour in South America. One 
morning, while out in the neighborhood of Quito, they asked a 
gentleman and lady whom they met strolling along the road if there 
was any place in the neighborhood where they could get breakfast. 
The gentleman pointed to a handsome house near by and said he 
thought they might get a fair meal there. He then added that he 
was the owner of the place and would be charmed to have the honor 
of their company. They had a delightful breakfast, and Mr. 
Church, knowing that the Equator must be near by, asked his host 
if he could tell him just where it was. ' I think you must be on it 
now,' he answered, pointing to a straight and deeply graven mark 
running across the floor. Mr. Church looked and saw that the line 
ran beneath his own chair, so that he had been eating breakfast 
astride the Equator, with one foot in the Northern Hemisphere and 
one in the Southern ! It seemed that a party of French scientists 
had been there, and located the exact line of the Equator. They 
had made their headquarters at that house for some days, and had 
marked the line of the Equator through their host's dining-room in 
appreciation of his hospitality, so that at that point, at least, it was 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 107 

something more than what the geographies call ^ an imaginary 
line.' " 

" It is interesting that the place where I saw them lay the last rail of 
the Mexican Central Railroad near Fresnillo, a little back of here, in 
March, 1884," said Ehot, " is very near the line of the Tropic of 
Cancer. It was a simple, but very significant ceremony, with the 
two engines, one coming down from the frontier and the other up 
from the City of Mexico, ' touching noses ' over the last rail. The 
American consul at Zacatecas stood on the pilot of the locomotive 
from the South and his brother, who was Mexican-born and a Mexi- 
can citizen, on that of the locomotive from the North. The Ameri- 
can brother waved the Mexican flag and the Mexican brother the 
American flag. The American shouted ^ Viva la republica de 
Mexico ! ' and the Mexican, ' Viva los Estados unidos del Norte ! ' 
(Live the republic of Mexico, and live the United States of the 
North) . Then they crossed the two flags, and the American consul 
called, in Spanish, ' As we two brothers embrace, so may the two 
sister republics embrace ! ' It was all spontaneous, and most sym- 
bolic of the event. The laying of that last rail, a little to the south 
of the Tropic of Cancer, completed the first railway in the world that 
had been built from the Temperate Zone down into the tropics. It 
was one of the most important events in the history of Mexico, for 
it made her practically a part of the world at large, and it brought 
the capitals of the two largest republics in North America into close 
and speedy communication." 

While they were at breakfast they had left the station of Calera. 
" In less than thirty kilometers," said Eliot, " between here and 
Zacatecas we climb nearly a thousand feet — only seven feet lacking." 



108 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

In their tortuous course to attain that height they wound steadily 
along an unbroken series of curves, and they all stood out on the 
" quarter-deck " to watch the landscape widen gloriously out as they 
steadily ascended, into great expanses of sun-bathed plains and 
rugged mountains. It looked as if they were entering a region of 
great military importance, for on the hill-tops and along their slopes 
were huge structures of stone resembling strongly fortified castles. 
Smooth and well-built roads wound their way up the hills like great 
white ribbons looped along over the brown mountain. 

" What are all those castles ? " asked Florence. 

" They are not castles, but mines," answered Eliot, " or rather 
the buildings of mines. They build to last in this country, you see. 
And they had to build strongly, too. Those mining headquarters 
are fortified like castles, for in the old days, up to within fifteen 
years, even, the owners of the mines had to depend upon themselves, 
for the most part, for the defence of their property against robbers, 
who scoured the country in organized bands, and against ' pronuncia- 
dos,' men who ' pronounced,' as they say in Spanish for getting up 
an insurrection, or revolution. That was in most instances done, not 
on account of any wrongs to be righted, but as a pretext for sys- 
tematic robbery of rich mines and haciendas, or great plantations. 
These great mines often had many hundreds of thousands of dollars, 
either in bullion or coin stored within their walls and awaiting 
a favorable opportunity for transportation across the country in 
'■ conductas ' or treasure-trains of bullion-laden wagons escorted by 
strong military guards. So they were prepared for attacks, and at 
times had to withstand regular sieges." 

Meanwhile they began to pass through clusters of buildings, out- 




FOUNTAIN AT ZACATECAS. 

See page 112. 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 109 

skirts of the city, disposed at haphazard over the hills, and here and 
there a ravine was spanned by a series of slender arches, carrying 
acqueducts for the water raised from mines. Water is an article 
carefully cherished in a region like Zacatecas, where rain is scarce. 

" Here is the next to the highest point on our route to Mexico — 
eight thousand and sixty-five feet above the sea," said Eliot. " It 
is also a divide between the Atlantic and Pacific, and we are now on 
the Pacific slope for the first time. We shall keep along on this 
slope all through the day, and tonight, just beyond Queretaro, we 
shall return to the Atlantic slope again. That shows we are foUow- 
ma- along- the backbone of the continent pretty closely. The City 
of Mexico is on neither slope, for its valley has no outlet. But Avhen 
the drainage tunnel is completed it will be brought onto the Atlantic 
slope, for the waters of its lakes and streams will flow down into the 
Gulf of Mexico." 

The motion of their train showed that they were now running 
along at a level, and in a moment they stopped at the station, where 
there was a bustling crowd in waiting. Below, to the left, there 
reached away a narrow valley, entirely filled with the great mass of 
buildings of a large city. It was an important-looking place. They 
looked down upon the flat roofs and traced Hues of crooked streets 
foUowino- the irreo-ular surface. Handsome towers and domes lifted 
their heads on all sides, and the solid buildings spread irregularly up 
the mountain slopes and extended up side-valleys and ravines, dis- 
appearing around projecting headlands. On the crest of a steep 
cliff risino- over the centre of the city there stood a romantic-looking 
church. 

"That cliff," said Eliot, "is called La Bufa. There is a 



110 THE CRUISE OF A LAND- YACHT. 

mine up there, as there are mines all around, above, beside, and 
even directly beneath the city. That church is the chapel for the 
men working in the mine. Every one of the great mines had its 
chapel in former days, and it was the pride of the mine-owners 
to make their chapels as magnificent as possible, so they often 
lavished treasures on them. This is one of the great mining cities 
of the world, and one of the three largest in Mexico — Guanajuato 
and Pachuca being the other two. They say that over a billion 
dollars in silver has been taken from the mines here in the past 
three centuries and more since the city was founded, and they are 
still producing richly." 

The young ladies exhausted their stock of superlatives on the 
picturesque spectacle before them and Mr. Brinkley laughed and 
told them that their supply of enthusiastic adjectives would be worn 
threadbare before they got through with Mexico. 

" Why, I had no idea there was anything like it on the Ameri- 
can continent ! It looks as old as — as Jerusalem ! '' said Mabel. 

" When a city gets to the age of three hundred ye^^rs, or so, two 
or three thousand years in addition doesn't make an appreciable 
difference in its looks," said Mr. Brinkley. 

Eliot pointed to the street-cars standing at the station. " They 
run down into the city without any mules, for it is down-grade all 
the way, and from the central plaza other cars run in the same way 
all the way down the valley to the city of Guadalupe, on account of 
the milder climate. The mules for bringing the cars back are 
driven down in droves." 

As they started, the young people all declared they wished they 
might stop over and see the place, but Mr. Brinkley said he probably 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. HI 

would on the way back, if they wanted to after seeing Guanajuato, 
which was finer yet. The air was of a dehghtful temperature, with 
an invigorating quahty in its thinness which made Harry, as he 
breathed quickly, say that he could not get enough of it. They 
wound along the side of the valley, as on a shelf above the city, and 
in one place they could see, in three successive places below them, 
the track over which they were to go. They looked down into the 
busy court-yards of mines, and in one they saw a great herd of 
mules driven rapidly about. " That is to extract the silver by the 
old Mexican method, called the ' P^tio process,' " said Eliot. ^^ Patio 
means court. The ore is crushed and mixed into a sort of paste, and 
after it has been exposed to the sun and kneaded over by the feet of 
those mules for several weeks it is ready for the extraction of the silver. 
Those round towers about fifteen feet high, with light smoke rising 
out of them, are kilns for roasting the ore. Here is a mining-shaft 
close to the track. Do you see that man sitting there and cracking 
stones with a hammer ? He is sorting the ore according to its rich- 
ness, and he gets three reales, or thirty-seven and one-half cents a 
carga, or three hundred pounds. The quantity is called a carga be- 
cause it is the regulation load, or ' cargo ' for a ' burro ' or donkey. 
You know there is a saying that a burro never dies, but there is an 
evidence of it," and he pointed to another shaft beside the track out 
of which a great bucket rose as they passed, hoisted by a mule at a 
windlass; it held over a hogshead of water, which Avas tipped out 
into a trough that conducted it into an acqueduct. " That bucket 
is made of burro-hides, and the hair is on the outside. It is the 
primitive way of draining the mines, but since the railway was built 
coal is brought in pretty cheaply, so that it is used in running 



112 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

pmnping-engines for the great mines, like those you see where the 
tall chimneys are on the mountain-side over there. 

" Do you know that this railway actually runs over a bed of 
silver alono- here ? All this rock-ballast is silver-ore from the 
Zacatecas mines, of such a low grade that it would not pay to work 
it, but there are probably many thousands of dollars' worth passed 
over by these trains." 

They lost the city from sight and passed along on their tortuous 
and rapidly descendmg way on the slope of the narrow valley, with 
the dry bed of a stream below. " That is the Zacatecas river," said 
Ehot. 

" River ! Where is the water ? " asked Florence. 
" 0, a Mexican river, at least here on the table-land, usually con- 
sists more of rocks than water, for the greater part of the year," 
Eliot responded. " I believe there is a better water-supply in Zacat- 
ecas now, but the last time I was there it was so scanty that the 
water was dipped out of the fountain in the main plaza by the 
women who come there for it with great jars, faster than it ran in. 
There is so little room in the centre of the city that they have arched 
over the river continuously in many places, to give space for ad- 
ditional buildings." 

Harry said : " I see a little damp place here and there down in 
the gravel just about big enough to give an Enghsh sparrow a 
bath." 

" Oh how glorious ! There is water enough out there ! " called 
Mabel, pointing off into the distance, towards the southwest. They 
were now just above the city of Guadalupe, nestling snugly at the 
mouth of the valley, which opened out into a vast ocean-like plain, 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



113 



out of which isolated mountain groups rose in the blue distance. 
Several miles away a large lake spread out on the level, glistening in 
the sunlight like a sheet of burnished Zacatecas silver. 

" That lake is a ^9resa, or reservoir, where water is stored, or 
' impounded,' as we engineers say, for irrigating purposes. It also 
gives a considerable water-power at its dam for a good-sized factory, 

a woolen-mill, I believe. Just along here is where I first saw the 

end of the track when they were building northward. I came up 
here with Major Harrington when he was superintendent of the 
track-department, toward the end of November, and we celebrated 
Thanksgiving with a turkey-dinner on his car. It is an interesting 
sight to see track-laying in Mexico. There are not lots of temporary 
board-shanties, and the ground isn't covered with tin cans when the 
camp moves on, as with us. The workmen were all Mexicans and 
they lived very simply. At night all that the most of them would 
do would be to spread their petates, or pieces of straw matting, out 
on the ground, and roll themselves up in their blankets and go to 
sleep. Favored ones would sleep under the boarding-cars where the 
ofacials lived, making their berths between the sleepers. Others 
would sleep in the culverts and would burrow in the sides of the 
ditches beside the track, excavating little dens in the earth — which, 
you see, is very hard nearly everywhere all through Mexico — a sort 
of gravel consolidated into a substance that is the next thing to 
stone. That is the reason why all these cuttings for the track have 
perpendicular sides, or nearly so. There is no frost to crumble the 
banks away, and so much money is saved in the work, for the slop- 
ing requires a large amount of additional excavation. 

" But I was teUing about the track-layers. The families of 



114: THE ORFISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

many of the laborers were with them, and they lived like nomads. 
Those laborers who had been with the force the longest were the 
most fortunate as to their quarters. They had been privileged to 
build little cubby-like domiciles in the shape of platforms suspended 
beneath the cars and occupying the space between the trucks. These 
were walled about with matting. These nests were hardly high 
enough to sit upright in, but the men lived there with their families ; 
that is, they slept there. Some of them had been with the force ever 
since construction began at the city of Mexico. I saw children play- 
ing around, three years old, who had been born in those kennels 
underneath the cars a few miles north of the capital." 

They shortly began to climb another range, where they saw 
forests of the enormous great tree-like yuccas that Eliot had spoken 
of, and dense thickets of the nopal, or prickly-pear cactus, covering 
a large portion of the mountains with their deep green. " They 
look like a lot of plates stuck together edgewise, one after the 
other," said Harry. 

" That is the most characteristic feature of Mexican vegetation," 
said Eliot ; " and it is one of the national emblems of this country. 
Do you see this Mexican dollar, with its fine design — an eagle with 
a snake in its beak and a nopal below ? It might be taken to symbol- 
ize the slaying of the serpent Tyranny by the eagle Freedom, but it 
is the Mexican coat of arms handed down from the Aztecs. When 
that people migrated southward they were told by their sooth-sayers, 
according to tradition, that when they came to a place where they 
saw an eagle sitting on a nopal with a snake in its beak there would 
be their abiding place. After long wanderings they came to the 
valley of Mexico, and there they saw, on a rock out in the lake, that 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



115 



which had been predicted. So there they settled and founded the 

Aztec realm, out of the ruins of which Mexico of to-day has grown. 

For Mexico of today is composed chiefly of 

the Aztec and kindred Indian races that, to a 

greater or less extent, have adopted the civiliza- 
tion of their conquerors. So when Mexico 

became independent it took for its national 

emblem the sacred token of the Aztecs." 

" And the Mexicans, as a race, sympathize 

with their Aztec progenitors today, and the 

memory of Cortez is still so unpopular that no 

monument has ever been erected to him," said 

Mr. Brinkley. 

All through the day their route lay through 

a country that, for the greater part, was richly 

cultivated, with intervals of rough and rocky 

upland. Their altitude frequently changed as they wound across 

the flanks of mountains from one great sunny valley down into 
another. With the varying height the cli- 
mate varied, but the change in this respect 
was not sharp during the daylight hours ; on 
the lower levels the air had a softer feeling, 
and on the higher they felt its thinner quality, 
and found that it was cool and bracing out 
of the sunlight. Eliot also pointed out how 
the character of the vegetation changed with 
/ the changes in height. 

Harry had brought along one of the new 





116 THE CRUISE OF A LAND- YACHT. 

instantaneous cameras that operate with a roll of sensitive film, and 
he found abundant occupation at the various stations, catching the 
strange-looking scenes; interesting features of building, and the varied 
groups of people assembled at such places — men with their broad 
sombreros and gay-hued zarapas, the peasants usually in loose cotton 
garoients that once had been white ; women in cheap calico prints and 
with the inevitable rebozo about their heads ; children with but a 
scanty shirt that was often a lace-work of tatters, while, at the minor 
stations, little brown tots were to be seen frisking about in a cherub- 
like state. Then there were beggars in over-plentiful quantity, in 
all stages of dilapidation and want of repair, with hands extended 
and whining in pitiful tones words like " Por amor de Dids, senor, 
una corta caridad ; un centavito, nada mas, 
senor ! " (For the love of God, senor, a short 
charity ; one little cent, and nothing more, 
senor !) 

" Oh, the poor things ! " cried Florence, 
sympathetically, the first time she saw them 
assembled in force, and in all their professional 
regaUa. 

" Don't give them a cent ! " Eliot said. " They are humbugs, 
every one of them. These beggars are the worst things about 
Mexico, I believe. They always make a better livelihood than these 
poor peasants who work hard from daylight to dark for a few cents 
a day. Why, at Amecameca, one old fraud was pointed out to me 
as the owner of three houses, and many of the people who neverthe- 
less gave him ahns and looked on him as sort of sanctified by his 
occupation, knew it, too ! The reason why beggars are so plenty in 




THE CRUISE OF A LAND- YACHT. 117 

countries like this is that the people have long been taught to regard 
beggary as a desirable institution, encouraging the virtue of charity. 
But to nourish an evil in order that to ameliorate it people may give 
themselves the pleasure of doing what they regard as a virtuous act 
is one of the worst forms of selfishness." 

" That is well put, Eliot," Mrs. Brinkley said. " The best way 
to deal with any evil is to seek its cause and try to remove that. 
And seeing all these poor people everywhere in Mexico, working so 
hard and patiently, I cannot make that fact agree with what is so 
often quoted from Lempriere, the French writer, and which I came 
across in this guide-book : ' The merciful hand of Providence has 
bestowed on the Mexicans a magnificant land abounding in resources 
of all kinds — a land where none ought to be poor, and where mis- 
ery ought to be unknown. A land whose products and riches of 
every kind are abundant and as varied as they are rich. It is a 
country endowed to profusion with every gift that man can desire 
or envy ; all the metals from gold to lead ; every sort of climate from 
perpetual snow to tropical heat, and of inconceivable fertility.' " 

" That is all strictly true," said Mr. Brinkley, " and it seems piti- 
ful that where there is such an abundance the wants of all 
should not be met, and that these poor people should have to toil so 
to keep soul and body together." 

" One reason is, that there is really an aristocracy here in this 
republic ; that the land is nearly all held by a few jDersons, in 
enormous areas like this great stretch of grain-fields that we see now 
spreading away as far as the eye can reach. Land-owners here are 
not taxed on what they own, but only on their income from it. So 
they only care to improve it just enough to give them princely in- 
comes, and these poor peasants are still practically slaves." 



118 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



" How they must suffer ! " said Florence. 

" No, they do not suffer so much as we might suppose," Eliot 
answered. " They are so ignorant that they have no idea of any 
other condition than their present one, which they suppose to be in 
the unchangeable order of things. So they are really happier than 
our working-classes at home who are so much better off, but who, 
by their intelligence, know how much better situated still are those 
who do not work so hard. Our workers know about the good things 
that others enjoy ; they read and hear about them every day, and so 
they want those things themselves. If Mexico ever has a good sys- 
tem of public schools the people for a while will not be so happy, for 
it will make them discontented with their lot, but that will make 
them progressive." 




CHAPTER XI. 



A SUMMER AFTERNOON IN JANUARY. 



T T was shortly after noon when the train stopped 
at a busy-looking station. " Aguascalientes," 
called Eliot ; " The City of Hot Waters, is 
what it means." 

" And hot weather too, I 
should say, by the looks of things," 
Florence remarked. " This is real 
summer, is n't it ? Look at those 
delightful green trees ! " and she 
pointed to an avenue of beautiful 
great alamos, or cottonwoods, as 
they call the poplar family in the 
West, crossing the railway track 
and running off into the distance. 
" Yes, we have said good-bye to winter for good, this season, 
although we shall return to spring-time again by to-morrow. But it 
is not a city of hot weather here, just as the water is really not hot 
— only agreeably warm. Aguascalientes has an almost perfect cli- 
mate, and it is so healthy that they say peoj)le never die here ; when 
they get old they simply dry up and blow away ! There is very 
little difference between summer and winter here." 

As the train stopped half an hour for dinner, they all went out for 




119 



120 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

a promenade on the station platform, and Eliot and Harry ran out to 
see the ditch of warm water that runs down into the city on one side of 
the avenue. It was a broad ditch, with smoothly cemented sides. 
The water was soapy -looking, for people of the laboring and peasant 
classes were continually bathing in it, singly and in groups. Eliot 
pointed out a family party, sitting comfortably with the water up to 
their necks, while their clothing, which they had washed, was drying 
on the bushes over their heads. " The people here keep pretty 
clean, for the climate permits them to bathe in the open air the year 
through, and there are few who do not do it," said Eliot. " The 
water in that ditch comes from the springs at the end of this avenue, 
two miles or so from the city. You can see what a volume must 
come out of the ground by the amount running here, while 
beside that ditch there runs a covered aqueduct to bring the water 
to the baths in the city, fresh from the springs. There are baths 
out there too, and many go out by preference, for the water there is 
warmer, of course. It cools off considerably before it reaches the 
city. Now let us run over for a look at the city baths ; they are 
close by the station." 

A few steps brought them to a beautiful garden filled with 
brilliant flowers, beside a long, low building with arcaded front. 
This arcade bounded the garden on two sides, and along the edge of 
the open corridor there ran a stream of clear water in a channel of 
masonry, lined smoothly with cement, and highly polished. " Why, 
this seems to be a swell place ! " Harry exclaimed. 

" Well, perhaps it might be called so, for only the more respect- 
able classes come here. The peones all bathe out in that ditch, 
where it doesn't cost anything." 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 121 

Eliot explained to the man at the door that they just wanted to 
look inside ; they hadn't time to take a bath, and were strangers 
who had run over from the train. With a courteous wave of the 
hand, and a " Pasen Ustedes ! " (Pass in, sirs !) that official g-ave 
them permission in a way that almost seemed as if it were they who 
were conferring the favor. Two well-dressed Mexican youths had 
laid down tickets just ahead of them, and they followed them along 
the corridor. They entered a place where there was a large oval 
swunming-basin, or alberca, as it is called in Spanish. It was sur- 
rounded by a series of cell-like dressing-rooms and a broad tiled 
space between them and the basin, which was brimming with limpid 
water that reflected a cloudless sky. Through the gratings of a 
handsome archway were seen the green and bloom of a garden be- 
yond. An attendant brought the young Mexicans some things on a 
tray and over his arm, and they disappeared in one of the rooms. 

" There is a large towel, a bath-sheet, a cake of soap, a clean 
comb and brush, and a little bottle of oil for each, and the whole 
thing, bath and all, costs only a few cents — not over a real', I be- 
lieve, or twelve and one-haM cents Mexican." 

" That is cheap enough ! " said Harry. 

" This place is run by the city, and there are dozens of Mexican 
towns with fine public baths such as you could not find in the 
larofest cities in the United States." 

" By the city ? Why, this beats the Athletic Club swimming- 
bath ! I should say our cities might learn something from Mexico ! " 

When they entered there was no one in the bath, but while they 
were talking a swimmer suddenly shot up out of the water, followed 
by a companion. 



122 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

" Where in the world did they come from ? " demanded Harry, 
■with wide-open eyes. 

Eliot laughed and showed him inside one of the dressing-rooms, 
a large apartment, with steps descending into a tank of water, four 
or five feet deep, out of which a tunnel-like arch, several feet long, 
ran under the tiled walk out into the tank. " They dove out 
through that place," he said. In the dressing-room there was a 
separate tank for use with soap, which a notice said was forbidden 
in the alberca and the connecting water. 

Returning to the train, they found the young ladies looking at 
some remarkably life-like representations of poultry — hens, chick- 
ens, roosters, and other familiar fowl — little images covered with 
feathers very skilfully and naturally applied, and the positions of 
picking up grain, scratching, crowing, etc., imitated with exactness. 
And all through the day at every principal station they found some 
pretty specialty of the locality offered for sale. At one place it 
might be some peculiar toys or ornaments, like nests of nicely woven 
little baskets fitted snugly into each other, at another some odd kind 
of pottery ; again it would be something in the way of apparel, like 
embroidery, lace, or leather-work ; and still again there would be 
sweetmeats of such a kind as could be only found at that place. 
At one station there were brought around some things that looked 
like pieces of some coarse-grained firewood, sawed into sections 
three or four inches long, and soaked in some dark liquid. 

" What can those things be ? " asked Florence. " Surely not 
something to eat ? " 

" They look like sections of cross-ties," said Harry. 

" Well, I shouldn't wonder if these people could even manage to 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 123 

fix up a cross-tie so as to make it taste pretty nice ! " laughed Mr. 
Brinkley. 

" In tlie pursuit of knowledge let us try some of it ! " said 
Mabel. 

So a considerable quantity was bought for three cents. " I told 
you so ! " shouted Harry, in mock triumph. " Cross-ties boiled in 
molasses, as sure as fate ! " 

It was some soft vegetable substance, with a coarse fibre ; it was 
easily cut, and when chewed yielded an abundance of watery juice 
that tasted like a very thin syrup of brown sugar. " What a strange 
thing for confectionery ! " said Mabel. " What can it be ? " 

" Well, it would probably not be exactly the thing for Huyler's ! " 
said Eliot. " It is the root of the mescal maguey which we have 
seen growing all over the country to-day, on the uplands ; the kind 
of aloe, or century-plant, whose roots they distil mescal from. The 
roots are very juicy and sweet, and boiling them a little makes them 
like this. The common people are very fond of it. Like sugar- 
cane, they can chew on it for a long time ; it ' stands by ' like the 
chewing-gum of the North ! " 

It was along past four o'clock when they saw, from the summit 
of a divide, a pleasant landscape stretched below them ; a wide valley 
with its inevitable rim of mountains ; there were spread out upon the 
brown plain of the levels two or three gleaming lakes set amid what 
looked like other lakes of soft spring-like green, in the shape of great 
fields of young barley. Out of the valley there rose two large towers 
close together. " That is the great church of Lagos, the ' City of 
Fools,' " said Eliot. " But Lagos doesn't mean fools ; it is la 
Ciudad de Lagos, the City of Lakes, but its nickname is * La Ciudad 



124 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 




de los Tontos.' Tontos means fools. That 
is the reputation that Lagos has all through 
Mexico, and all the stories of absurd say- 
ings and doings, and of what we would 
call Irish bulls, are located there. Some 
of them appear to have a foundation in 
fact, too. For instance, there is a 
bridge upon which there is an in- 
scription to this effect : ' This is a 
bridge, which, in the year so-and- 
so, was built here ! ' 
" One of the best stories is that of how a Lagos man moved a 
hole. Near his house there was a large hole in the ground, and he 
did not like the looks of it. So he decided to remove it. He there- 
fore filled it up with earth dug from \ the ground adjoining 
But this made a second hole. He 
earth dug from a third hole, iji the 
kept on, and step by step the hole 
farther and farther off, until finally he 
it to the river, where he got rid of it 

" At one time a considerable crop oi 
on the roof of their ofreat church. After 
deliberation as to the best way to get rid 
of the grass, the Board of Aldermen voted 
to buy a cow, hoist her up onto the roof, 
and let her eat away the grass ! 

" One of their principal building's, — 
the City Hall, I beheve — was not in ex- 



filled that up with the 

same way. So he 

slowly grew 

^ had moved 

entirely ! 

grass grew 




m u c . 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT . 



125 



actly the position they wanted it ; it was somewhat too near the 
street. So the aldermen called all the citizens to assemble and 
unite in giving it one grand push ; that would move it back. 
But how would they know when they had pushed it far enough ? 
A brio-ht idea struck the alcalde ; they could push better without 
their o-reat broad sombreros on their heads and their zarapes about their 
shoulders, and so, obedient to his command, they went around to the 
rear of the building and carefully laid down their sombreros and 
zarapes in a long line. When they got the building moved to that 
point, it would be just right. Then they all went back to the front 
side and prepared to join in a mighty push. While they were all 
pushing, grunting, and puf&ng in con-cert, some thieves came along, 
and. ran off with all the sombreros and zarapes, making a rich haul. 
When the citizens repaired to the rear again to see what result their 
efforts had met with they were astonished to find their things all 
gone. Alas ! they had pushed too hard, they said ; their powerful 
efforts had indeed moved the great stone building, but had moved it 
so far as to pass the line, and their things were now all hopelessly 
crushed beneath the massive walls ! " 

" I learned a curious fact in photography from a picture of that 
church in Lagos," said Mr. Brinkley. " It is a grand church. 
When Jackson, the Denver photographer, took his magnificent series 
of Mexican views several years ago, that church was one of the sub- 
jects. I happened in at Ticknor's one day, when my friend Ware, 
the editor of the American Architect, showed me a copy from that 
photoo-raph which he had just had made for reproduction in his 
journal, together with Jackson's original. Looking at the fagade in 
the photograph by Jackson, one could see only a uniform mass of 



126 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



dark shadow in the deep recess of the great doorway. But Mr. 
Ware held it up so that the light shone through it as through a 
transparency, and then could be seen all the detail of the rich wood- 
carving of the doors. Then holding up the photograph of the pho- 
tograph, he pointed out the same effect when the light shone through 
that. This proved that the lens of the camera is sensitive to things 
which the eye cannot perceive, and that although it may be impos- 
sible for the eye to see certain things in a photograph, nevertheless 
they are still there." 

At the station in Lagos there were tramway cars in waiting, as 
they found at nearly every considerable place 
along the line ; familiar-looking American-built 
cars such as may be seen nearly the whole world 
over, now-a-days. In Mexico, the street-railways 
are called tranvias ; the second part of the word 
is literally translated into Spanish, whilst the 
English tram is translated by the resemblance in 
sound into " tran," which is appropriate in this 
connection, for it is used in the sense of motion, 
as forming the root of words like transit, trans- 
port, transfer. The English word tram, how- 
ever, has a quite different origin, since it means 
coal-wagon, and tramway is supposed to have 
originally been a road for coal-wagons. It is also 
supposed to have come from the name of Mr. 
Outram, who was connected with the collieries at Newcastle, so that 
the tram-roads were at first called Outram roads. 

" What beautiful-looking fruit ! " cried Florence, at sight of the 




THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 127 

various yn^^eros, or fruit-venders, who gathered about the train with 
great basket-fuls poised on their heads. " It makes my mouth 
water ! " 

" Yes, indeed," agreed Harry. " I mean to try every kind of 
fruit I come across in Mexico ! " 

" And if you are the kind of boy I've always taken you for," 
said Eliot, " you will like nearly every kind, too ; — particularly 
these chirimoyas,'^ he added, as they took on board the greater part 
of the large and varied stock of a slender, brown-skinned and gentle- 
voiced youth with large dark eyes, whom Eliot succeeded in beating 
down in his prices about one-third. " Just out of principle," he said, 
" for these people would not know what to make of it if you did not 
do it ; they might suspect you of some sinister motive, and it does 
not pay to get yourself disliked ! But this youth surprises me in 
selling out nearly his whole stock at reduced prices ! I think he 
must have been under American influence ! The common people 
have no idea of the principles of wholesale trade. If you want to 
buy things in quantity, not only will they make no reduction, but 
they often insist on charging a higher rate, because it puts them to 
so much more trouble ! " 

" Really, such unworldliness is delicious ! — But truly, are these 
chirimoyas? You know I have been hearing of chirimoyas from 
Eliot for the past six years," said Mabel, " and I have despaired of 
ever seeing one." 

" Let us try these other things first, and save the chirimoyas till 
the last," EHot suggested. " This mamey is a good thing to begin 
with." 

They aU gathered around the big basket and watched Eliot 



128 . THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

with curiosity as lie took a large brown fruit with a rough, shell-like 
covering, and oval-shaped, and cut it lengthwise into several slices, 
as is usually done with a melon. It disclosed a large, chestnut- 
colored pit enclosed by a melon-like flesh of a deep salmon color., 
Each took a slice and tasted it. " How odd ! " said Mabel, critically. 
" It has a sort of cooked taste." 

" I think it's real nice ! " Florence declared. " But what does it 
taste like ? Something familiar, and I can't think of it ! " 

" Ready-made pumpkin pie ; that's just what it is ! " shouted 
Harry. 

" Harry has it ! It does have a strong resemblance, with the 
addition of a peculiarly juicy, fruity sweetness," said Mabel. 

" Now next ! A cliico zaj)ote apiece will be in order," and Eliot 
handed around a kind of round fruit with a rough brown earth- 
colored skin, and about the size of an ordinary peach. " They look 
like potatoes," Harry remarked. 

" These are especially esteemed in Mexico," Eliot explained. 
ChiGO zajjote means small zapote. There are numerous kinds of 
zapote, and we have two more on our list. The mamey is a zapote, 
I meant to teU you." Mabel and Florence both declared the chico 
zapote delicious, with its delicate flavor and almost sugary sweet- 
ness, but Harry accepted it with some reserve. " I like it," he said, 
" all except its coarse- grain, like a cat's tongue, as if its rough skin 
had struck in. Something like some of our coarse pears, you 
know." 

" Now for a zapote j^i^i^to, or dark zapote ! " and Eliot took up a 
soft, rather flabby-looking fruit with a thin, dull-green skin. He 
tore it open and the interior was shown to be a dark, soft and pasty- 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 129 

looking substance. " Why, it's rotten ! " cried Harry ; " you'll 
have to select another one, although they all look about the same," 
and Florence declared that it was a most horrible-looking thing. 

" that's all right ! " said Eliot ; " that's the way it naturally 
looks when it is ripe ; you must try everything, you know ! " 

Harry was the first to venture it, and the dark streaks that it 
made about his mouth made the others laugh merrily. " You re- 
mind me of a small child that has been trying the quality of his mud 
pies," Eliot told him. " A spoon would be better to eat this Avith," 
Eliot suggested, " and, indeed, it will come in very handily for some 
of the things further on." Some teaspoons were brought, and they 
all declared that the zapote jDrieto was very nice after all. 

" We had better call it the Singed-Cat fruit," said Harry, " for 
it is better than it looks." 

" It is really a very refreshing fruit," said Eliot. "And it is a very 
nice dessert dish, fixed up with vanilla and sugar, and perhaps some 
spice or other. It also makes a very nice water-ice." 

" I should think it would really make a very nice-looking dish 
on the table, and resembles chocolate ice-cream in appearance," Mabel 
said. 

Next in order came a fruit closely resembling the mamey. 
" This is our last zapote for the present ; it is a zapote borracho," 
and a slightly mischievous look might have been seen coming into 
Eliot's eyes as he said the words. Its interior was a bright yellow, 
instead of the deep salmon of the mamey. No one took kindly to 
this fruit, although Harry said that he liked it Avhen he first tasted 
it, but then he changed his mind, saying it was too mealy. 

" Zapote horracho means ' drunken zapote ; ' it is so called be- 



130 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

cause eating it makes a person intoxicated. But don't be fright- 
ened," Eliot said to the young ladies, laughing, as a look of consterna- 
tion came into their faces. " It takes two or three to jDroduce any 
effect, and you have only eaten a mouthful. Of course the fruit 
does not contain alcohol, hut some kind of narcotic ; probably opium, 
just as lettuce does. These things here are granaditas ; you can't 
help liking them," and he handed around some fruit about the size 
and shape of eggs. They were hard and shell-like, something like 
gourds, and they had a beautiful smooth surface of rich yellow, with 
crimson cheeks. Cutting off the end, like that of a boiled Qgg^, the 
interior was found to consist of a mass of seeds enveloped in soft 
pulp, something after the manner of a gooseberry. This they ate 
with a sjDOon. It had an exquisite flavor, as was unanimously 
agreed, and Eliot told them they might eat a dozen apiece, if they 
liked, without any harm. " It is the fruit of the passion-flower," he 
said, " and it is worth remembering, if any of us should happen to be 
troubled with a cough while we are in Mexico, that this egg-shaped 
shell of the granadita makes one of the best of pectorals if steeped 
in a cupful of hot water. Now we must be ready for the chiri- 
moyas ! " and Eliot picked out a large fruit, irregular in shape, 
" about the size of a base-ball," as Harry said, dull green in color, 
and covered with large scale-marks, something like an alligator skin. 
" It is in various sizes, you see," said Eliot, taking up one no larger 
than a peach, and j^ointing out a big one in the basket, nearly as 
large as a cocoanut. He cut the fruit into quarters and handed it 
round ; it Avas white, soft, and very juicy, much like the flesh of a 
Bartlett pear, but with just the trace of a fibrous texture from the 
core outwards, as in a pineapple. Embedded in the fruit at inter- 



THE CKUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 131 

vals were large dark seeds about the size of beech-nuts. Eliot 
recommended the use of spoons in eating this. 

" Heavenly ! " called Florence. " But what is it like ! Peach 
ice-cream with the coldness taken out of it, I should say ; and I can 
detect strawberry flavor, too ! " 

" It is perfectly delicious," Mabel agreed. " But it seems to me 
there is just a suggestion of banana about it, also ! " 

" And pineapple, too ! " added Harry. 

" Yes, you can find in it a trace of any fruit you like," said Eliot. 
" I agree with the definition of the chirimoya to be found in the 
Spanish dictionary. ^ The most delicious of American fruits,' is all 
it says. A Peruvian friend told me they had this saying in Lima : 

' Hay dos cosas en la vida 
que nunca se olvida : 
la felicidad 
y la chirimoya.' 

Which means : ' There are two thingfs in life that are never to be 
forgotten : happiness, and the chirimoya.' We boys used to say that 
there is only one fruit that is finer than the chirimoya, and that is 
the mango ; and there is only one that is finer than the mango, and 
that is the chirimoya ! Perhaps it is well that the chirimoya only 
comes just as the mango goes, for it would be difficult to make a 
choice between them, and to have them both at the same time would 
be an embarrassment of riches." 

" But I thought you agreed with the Spanish definition, and that 
would leave you no choice between the two ! " remarked Florence. 

" yes ; there is a good loop-hole there ! It says the most 
delicious American fruit, and the mango is not native to America ; 
it is an importation from India, or China, just as the whole citrous 



132 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

family — oranges, lemons, limes, etc., were introduced from the Old 
World. The bananas are said to have been found in the New 
World at the time of discovery, and it is difficult to find out which 
continent they are native to. As they are seedless, as a rule, it 
shows that they must have been cultivated for ages and ages, and 
they must have been taken from one continent to the other by the 
hand of man, which indicates that there must have been communica- 
tion between the Old World and the New in times before Columbus. 
But all the fruit we have just eaten is purely native to tropical 
America, besides which there are the pineapple and many other nice 
things. So the aborigines were not so badly off as the wretched 
Australians, for Carl Lumholtz told me that in that country there 
was hardly an edible fruit. Nearly all these fruits came from the 
Tierra caliente, the hot country of Mexico, lower down than this 
region where we are, which is called the Tierra templada, or temper- 
ate country, while the City of Mexico is so high as to be in what is 
called the Tierra fria, or cold country. This last term we should 
hardly agree with, for it is really most temperate. But the method of 
division here adopted is according to vegetation, and anything above 
the altitude where the date-tree does not ripen its fruit is called 
' cold.' " 

" Is there any good fruit peculiar to the high table-land ? " asked 
Harry. 

" yes, there is the tuna, or prickly-pear, which grows in enor- 
mous quantities, but it does not begin to ripen until May and June. 
There are several kinds, crmison and white, and they are nice and 
refreshino- ; somethino- like a water-melon in flavor. But woe be 
unto you if you tackle one for the first time without experi- 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 133 

enced assistance, for thousands of little prickles will get into your 
fingers and you will have an all-day contract getting them out ! " 

" Here is one more native American fruit of the tropics, but we 
will wait until supper for that. It is the aguacate, which they call 
the ' alligator pear,' in the British West Indies. But it has no 
resemblance to either an alligator or a pear, and they gave it that 
name because some ig-norant man must have mistaken the word for 
^ alligator ' when he heard the Spaniards pronounce it. Aguacate is 
a native Aztec, or Nahuatl word, like chocolate and tomato, for both 
of which we are indebted to Mexico. The original of tomato is 
jitomate, (pronounced he-to-mah-tay). You can recognize a Nahuatl 
word in the termination ' ate,'' originally ^ atl, which is one of the 
most common in the language. The aguacate might properly be 
called ^ salad fruit,' for it makes a delicious salad. I saw Sam buy- 
ing some nice fresh tomatoes, so I will hand these aguacates over to 
him and give him some pointers on salad-making." 

As the train departed from Lagos, where groups of tall, full- 
foliaged trees made pleasant shade beside a pretty stream near the 
station, Eliot called to them to look out on the left. " You will see 
a sight that will show you that the good folks of Lagos are not such 
fools, after aU. Do you see all those maguey leaves laid out close 
together on the ground in that lot? Well, that is an ice-factory ! " 

" Why, how can they make ice that way ? " asked Harry. " I 
thought they had to have ammonia, and long coils of pipe, and a lot 
of machinery to make artificial ice." 

" Well, they do it in a much simpler way here. All they have 
to do is to pour water into the shallow troughs formed by those 
leaves as you see them lying there ; pour it in at night, and in tlie 



134: THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

morning you have your ice ! And that too, in a country where the 
temperature never falls to freezing-point ! " 

" But how can that be possible ?" 

" It is because the air here is so dry. The leaves are good con- 
ductors of heat, and the dry air makes evaporation so rapid that it 
quickly deprives the water of its heat and converts it into ice. In 
the morning they collect it and use it in making ice-cream and water- 
ices, which the Mexicans are very fond of. In nearly every city and 
town you will see men going around the streets with the freezers bal- 
anced on their heads and crying out ' Nieve ! nieve ! ' (pronounced 
nee-ay- vay) which is Spanish for snow." 

They sped southward through the broad valleys of the Bajio 
(pronounced Bahe-o), as that portion of the table-land is called 
alono- which the railway passes between Lagos and Queretero — a 
depression, the word means. Its altitude is in the neighborhood of 
six thousand feet, giving it a mild climate of perpetual summer, 
without the torrid heats of lesser elevations in the tropics. The air 
was delightfully soft, and the slanting shadows of late afternoon 
made the mountains to the westward grow vague and dusky, while 
the detail of the seamed and rocky flanks of the ranges to the east- 
ward were brought out ruddily in sharp relief. Twilight had turned 
into darkness before they reached the large city of Leon. Supper was 
served somewhat later than usual, after they had left Silao, where 
there was a large crowd at the station, for it was the fashion there 
for a o-oodly portion of the city to turn out to see the trains come in 
at evening. 

Eliot gave an approving smile when Sam's dusky face appeared 
in the doorway as the salad was brought on ; fresh sliced tomatoes 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 135 

mingled with the yellowish-green of the aguacates, and slightly 
sprinkled with chopped onions. They all declared it the most 
delicious salad they had ever tasted ; the aguacate element made it 
perfect. " I expect in the hands of a culinary genius like Sam the 
aguacate will be well utilized while we are in Mexico," said Mr. 
Brinkley, and the responsive grin of the cook never showed a broader 
expanse of gleaming teeth. 

" If you have any left, just send them in," said Eliot. " Harry 
here, athirst for information and experience, wants to know more 
about the aguacate. You see," he continued, as the fruit was placed 
before him, " there are two varieties ; these large ones are called 
paguas. While the regular aguacates have a thin skin these paguas 
have a rind that is almost like a shell. But there is no material dif- 
ference in taste." As he cut it open a large pit was exposed, about 
the size of an ordinary hen's-egg. " Like the greater proportion of 
the tropical fruits of this country, it runs very largely to seed. 
These aguacate-pits are said to make a good remedy for rheumatism. 
The aguacate is sometimes called ' vegetable butter,' and the Mexi- 
cans often spread it on their bread, or tortillas. It is a good substi- 
tute, particularly in the hot country, where butter is almost unknown. 
Just try it ! " 

" It does seem something like butter, that way," said Mabel, Avho 
had declared the aguacate by itself rather insipid. " It has a fresh 
buttery flavor, with just a suggestion of spiciness." 

" It seems curious that it should resemble butter so when it is 
not in the least greasy," said Florence. 

" Mashed up and put into consomme it makes a very nice thick 
soup, and there are various other ways in which it can be utilized," 
said Eliot. 



136 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

The train slowed up while they were still at the table, and before 
it came to a stop they heard a confusion of cries outside, the burden 
of which was " Fresas ! fresas ! " 

" Irapuato ! " said Mr. Brinkley, " the town of perpetual straw- 
berries." 

" Yes," said Eliot, " there are strawberries to be had here at the 
station every day in the year." 

They looked out, and beside the train were a score, or so, of 
peasants, men and women, offering baskets of fine, large strawberries, 
and calling " Fresas ! Fresas ! " at the top of their lungs. Several 
baskets, containing something like two quarts each, were bought for 
two reales, or a peseta (twenty-five cents) apiece, and one was placed 
on the table before them. 

" That is why I ordered supper later than usual tonight," said Mr. 
Brinkley. " I wanted to finish off with strawberries. I prefer to 
eat them just as they are, for they are so sweet that to add sugar 
to them seems as vain as the gilding of refined gold. Strawberries 
are sweetened here by a flood of unfailing sunshine." 

" These were made to be eaten, and not simply sold, like most 
of our ' market-strawberries ' at home," said Eliot. 

" Aren't they good, though ! " said Harry. " What a country 
for fruit ! " 



CHAPTER XII. 



IlSr THE CITY OF THE AZTECS. 




■^■-^^I--- 



^AT^AKE up, Harry! We shall 
be there in half an hour ! " 



Harry was sleeping 
soundly, and Eliot had 
given him a shake. He 
opened his eyes drowsily 
and said "Where?" 

" Why, in the City o£ 
Mexico ! " 

Harry jumped up, alert 
with excitement. When he stepped out onto the " quarter-deck " 
with his cousin he exclaimed, with a shiver, " Why, it's cold ! " 

" Yes, we're back in springtime again, as I told you. Summer 
or winter, the mornings are cool here.' 

The train was whirling up a cloud of thick, fine dust, and they 
speedily went back inside, where the rest of the party soon joined 
them. It was just growing light. They were traversing a wide, 
level plain, bordered by high mountains. Long lines of trees, 
bordering fields and highways, and fresh with the Hght green leaf- 
age of early spring, stretched off into the distance. The ground 
was dry and brown, except where there were patches of green here 
and there. " Spring is under way, now, as you can see by the trees, 

137 



138 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

the most of which lose their leaves in December and strike them out 
again towards the end of January, at this altitude. But you see, 
contrary to our springtime procedure, the trees turn green before the 
grass does ; months before, in fact. For the grass will not spring 
up green until the rainy season sets in; towards the end of May, or 
early in June." 

'^' This does look as if we were getting near a big city," said 
Harry. The buildings began to grow thicker on either side ; there 
were factories, and new streets with straggling rows of houses lately 
built, or just going up. These houses were mostly of one story, 
with plain fronts, and windows guarded with iron gratings. 

" Yes, Mexico is one of the great cities of this continent. It is 
nearly as large as Boston ; Frank Jersey wrote me lately that it had 
almost four hundred thousand inhabitants now. But I had no idea it 
had spread way out here. All this was open fields six years ago. 
Mexico is growing like one of the young giant cities of the West." 

The train began to move at the slow pace which is always taken 
in the approach of an important terminal, as if in sedate respectful- 
ness to a large population. They passed by railway machine-shops 
and storehouses, with long lines of freight and passenger cars, loco- 
motives under steam, and finally came to a stop under a great iron 
roof supported by rows of handsome stone piers, leaving the structure 
open to the air at the sides. They all went to the door to watch the 
usual sight that attends the arrival of a train at its destination, and 
it did not differ materially here from similar scenes in the iJnited 
States. " I wonder if anybody will be here to meet us at this early 
hour," said Eliot, scanning the faces in the crowd of people waiting 
on the platform and looking expectantly towards the cars. " Yes — 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 139 

here come Frank Jersey and his wife — and who's that young Mexi- 
can with them ? His face looks famihar, but I can't place him." 
Eliot jumped off to meet his friends, who hastened towards them. 
There was a hearty greeting, with a clasping of hands ; then Harry 
perceived a look of recognition come over EHot's face as his eyes 
met those of the young Mexican, and with astonishmemt he saw the 
two fall across each others shoulders in an embrace, giving mutually 
and simultaneously three or four affectionate pats on the back with 

the right hand. 

" That is the way friends meet in Mexico, after an absence," said 
Mr. Brinkley. " EHot couldn't do it better were he to the manner 

born ! " 

" Pero Nacho ! Que nino tan crecido ! Quien pudiera recono- 
certe !" (But Nacho ! What a grown-up boy ! Who could have 
recognized thee !) exclaimed Eliot. Mr. and Mrs. Jersey advanced to 
o-reet the others. They were old friends of Eliot's and had become 
intimate with Mr. and Mrs. Brinkley on their previous visit to 
Mexico, where Mr. Jersey was in business. Mrs. Jersey and Mrs. 
Brinkley kissed each other first on one cheek and then on the other. 
" Costumbre del pais ! " said the former, with a laugh, and then, 
with her husband she was made acquainted with the young ladies 
and Harry. " You see we are out for our morning run on horse- 
back," said Mrs. Jersey. " Frank and I make it a point to ride out 
reo-ularly every morning, and it keeps us in splendid health, even in 
this unhealthy city." 

They were both in riding-suits ; she with the usual ladies' habit 
and a simple jockey cap, while her husband wore a short, snug 
jacket, close-fitting trousers spreading out over the feet, and a broad- 



140 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



brimmed, liigh-crowned sombrero. " I see you still ride Mexican 
style ! " said Mr. Brinkley. 

" When you are in Rome, you know ! " said Mr. Jersey. " Be- 
sides, it is the most comfortable way. 
But for charro, just look at our friend 
young Andrade, (pronounced An-drah- 
thay) who came along with us this morn- 
ing ! " The young Mexican, a tall, stal- 
wart, and handsome young fellow with 
large, velvety eyes, was dressed in a suit 
cut like that of Mr. Jersey's, but with a 
double row of silver buttons set close to- 
gether down the trousers-seams, and his 
sombrero was adorned with a heavy silver 
band and a deep border of richly em- 
broidered silver work around the brim. 

" What a gorgeous creature ! " whis- 
pered Florence to Mabel, as he approached 
with Ehot. "My friend, Seiiorito Don 
Ignacio Andrade," said the latter, intro- 
ducing him. The young fellow answered 
in perfect English, with hardly the trace of an accent. Remarking 
upon it, Mrs. Brinkley asked him where he had attended school in 
the United States, and he replied that he had never yet been north, 
but hoped to soon. 

" These young Mexicans are marvels at learning English," said 
Eliot. " My friend Nacho here was only Harry's age when I saw 
him last, and now he has grown into the young giant you see before 
you. 




THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 141 

" You must join us at breakfast," said Mr. Brinkley to his 
friends, as that meal was announced while they were talking. The 
invitation was accepted and, as they seated themselves at the table, 
Mr. Jersey said to Mr. Brinkley : 

" I received your telegram, and have engaged good rooms for 
you all at the Hotel del Jardin. The hotels are so crowded now 
it was a mere chance that I got them." 

" We are in luck, then. Although it might be more comfortable 
living on the car, I decided to go to a hotel in order to give the 
young people a chance to see what it is like. And then they would 
be nearer the centre of the city." 

" You must let us do all we can to make your stay pleasant," 
said Mrs. Jersey. " The young peo]3le must join us in some horse- 
back excursions out into the country. How would tomorrow morn- 
ing do for the first one ? Frank will see that good horses are 
engaged." 

This was agreed upon. The young Mexican placed his own 
services at their disposition in the most charming manner, and said 
he had a younger brother of about Harry's age, and the two, he was 
sure, would make good friends. Harry was delighted at the idea of 
a Mexican boy companion, and Mr. Brinkley begged Don Ignacio to 
bring his brother around at the earliest opportunity. 

By ten o'clock they were ready to go to the hotel. Their 
friends, who had left them shortly after breakfast, had ordered 
carriages for them. How fascinatingly novel did everything appear 
to the eyes of the young people, who were now passing for the 
first time through the streets of a Mexican city. At such a time 
every detail that differs from those of the scenes one has been 



142 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

accustomed to makes a vivid impression, and even to the three who 
renewed their acquaintance with familiar sights, it had the effect of 
novelty. 

" There seems to be a magical influence in the air of this place," 
said Mrs. Brinkley, " and it always gives me the sensation of taking 
part in a stage-spectacle." And indeed, one's first impressions of 
the historic city, the oldest capital in the New World, are apt to be 
of a theatrical order. It all looks so strange, so different from what 
has been experienced. 

"For all I've read about it, and for all the photographs I've 
seen, I had no idea it was anything like this," said Mabel. " Now 
with London it was quite different. At the start, it seemed as if I 
had always known it, and was returning to a place where I had once 
lived. I seemed to recognize nearly everything I saw there." 

The sun, pouring down its dazzling light from a cloudless sky of 
deep blue, seemed as high up from the southern horizon, even 
though so early in the year, as it was in midsummer in the 
home-latitude. The streets were straight, and broad at first, but 
narrower as they approached the centre. The buildings were mostly 
two and three stories in height, some were plain and the stone fronts 
of others were elaborately carved, and others still were covered with 
stucco, moulded or stamped into intricate arabesque patterns. All 
the windows were very large, and opened like doors upon iron-railed 
balconies where women leaned by the hour looking out over the 
busy life of the street. On all sides were stately church-towers and 
beautiful glittering domes covered with glazed tile. In the streets 
were motley crowds. There were many stylishly dressed people 
passing to and fro, mostly with dark foreign faces. Ladies were 




A DOORWAY IN MEXICO. 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 145 

frequently seen without hats, their heads gracefully draped with 
mantillas of black lace. Many horsemen were met, dressed for the 
greater part in the style of their friend Andrade, their horses step- 
ping lightly and decked with an abundance of stamped leather-work, 
rich with silver decoration, and bright-hued zarapes rolled across the 
saddles behind them. Multitudes of humble-looking people were in 
the streets, mostly with Indian features, and dressed in thin gar- 
ments of cotton, usually very dirty and often very ragged. Many 
of these men were running along at a steady dog-trot, bending over 
with heavy burdens carried on their shoulders, such as great cases of 
goods and large trunks. In many cases, straps across their fore- 
heads helped sustain these loads. Others trotted by on their way to 
market, with loads of vegetables and fruits, and some of these carried 
great cages of wicker-work crowded with live poultry, while outside 
there dangled bunches of live fowl with legs tied together and heads 
down, resignedly bearing what must be torture. Herds of shaggy 
burros trudged patiently in from the country laden with produce 
packed upon their backs, and other herds carried charcoal and build- 
ing-stone. On the corners stood slender and youthful-looking police- 
men, in neat, military-looking uniforms of dark blue, and amiable 
faces, quite in contrast with the burly guardians of the peace at 
home. A battalion of troops passed rapidly by with a great clatter 
of drums and shrill music of bugles ; the soldiers short and slouchy- 
looking, and proceeding at a quickstep. 

They passed by a grand equestrian statue standing in a broad 
circular space whence there radiated wide, straight avenues, one of 
them lined with taU trees. They rolled from the rumbling, rough 
cobble-stone pavement onto a smooth expanse of asphalt, and the 



146 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 




transition made Harry think of the sensa- 
tion of crossing a bar from the tossing- seas 
of the ocean to the smooth waters of a 
harbor. They passed a long, park-Hke 
public j3leasure-ground, which Eliot said 
was the Alameda — a naiie commonly 
designating a public garden, and coming 
from the word alamo, or poplar, with 
which tree it was customary, at first, to 
shade such places. The alamos and ash- 
trees here were bright with fresh young 
foliage, and they caught long vistas along 
the shady alleys that crossed the place. 
Nearly every 



open space they passed was utilized by a 
little city garden, with bits of fresh green 
lawn, fountains, and bright with flowers, 
while tall, broad-leaved bananas, young 
date-palms, and fantastic cactus gro\vths 
gave an intensely foreign aspect. The 
churches and the great buildings that 
were formerly convents, together with 
many other old and massive structures 
that had been standing for one, two, and 
three centuries, were stained with hues 
and tints that had from time to time been 
applied in successive coatings, making an 
indescribable intermingling of colors that, 




THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



M7 



under the intense sunlight, had the charm of variegated tapestry. 
Often, as they quickly passed a building they would catch momentary 
glimpses of a sunny inner court, surrounded by arcaded galleries 
of carved stone-work, with flowering plants m pots or great terra- 
cotta jars, along the balustrades. Everything seemed to be laugh- 
ing with blossoms and sunshine. 

They finally drew up at their 
hotel, a massive structure of two 
stories built along two sides of a 
large garden that, on the side where 
they entered, was separated from the 
street by a high wall. They passed 
along a broad stone platform where 
clusters of guests, evidently Ameri- 
cans for the greater part, were loung- 
ing and chatting. In the angle of 
the two wings they went up a stair- 
way to a corridor along the outside 
of the second story, to their rooms, 
which they found consisting of 
apartments of two, overlooking the 
street on one side and the garden on the other. They were com- 
fortably furnished, and Eliot pointed out that they would have the 
benefit of the sunshine all day ; a most desirable thing in the City 
of Mexico, where the thin air made it chilly and unhealthy in rooms 
where no sunlight entered. " This hotel is one of our great im- 
provements since you were here, Eliot," said Mr. Jersey, who was 
on hand at the hotel when they arrived. " But it is not so large 




148 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



as it looks, and they are going to double or treble its size, they say, 
with new wings and an additional story. And then we shall still 
need a hotel of several hundred rooms to accommodate the travel 
coming this way. You must remember this place, Eliot ? How it 
would make the old Franciscan fathers stare to see the change ! " 

" yes ; this is the old garden of San Francisco." And he ex- 
plained to the others how the building was remodeled from a portion 
of the old Franciscan convent, one of the largest in the country, and 
covering many acres m the heart of the city. When the property 
was confiscated by the government, streets were cut through it and 
it was broken up into lots. 

" If the young ladies would like, we will run up onto the roof 

and I will show you some- 
curious," said Mr. 
Jersey. 

" That is a good 
idea; when one 
comes into a new 
place, get a bird's- 
eye view of it at 
the start, if 
possible, and it 
will help in ' orientating ' one's 
self, or in learning ' how to 
steer your course,' as our young 
yachtsman here would put it," said Mr. Brinkley. 

From the flat, tile-paved roof of the hotel they looked off over 
the city. The level expanse of buildings was relieved by dozens of 




On the 

Hotel Roof. 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 149 

domes and towers in great variety ; island-like clumps of trees rose 
from plaza gardens here and there, and all around the valley there 
towered high mountains. But almost the first to attract their eyes, 
and enchain them in silent admiration, was the glorious spectacle 
that presented itself off towards the southeastward, — the two great 
snowy summits of Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl, " The Smoking 
Mountain " and the " White Woman," as the names given them by 
the Aztecs signified. Their forms contrasted strongly ; the former 
stood isolated in a tall, symmetrical cone ; the latter spread out rug- 
ged and Alpine-like, its irregular contour showing at once whence 
came its name, for it resembled the shape of a woman lying at full 
length and shrouded in white. The effect of the dazzling snow 
mantles was singularly pure and gleaming in the transparent air and 
against the clear sky. The grand summits seemed as aerial as 
clouds, and were whiter than any clouds in their crystalline splendor. 

" You pronounce their names, Mr. Jersey, somewhat differently 
from what I have heard before," said Mabel. "It is difficult, at the 
best, to adjust the tongue to all those syllables, and any change 
quite upsets one's ideas." 

" I was giving them the original Nahuatl pronunciation that you 
will hear out in the country all through the valley : Popocatepetl 
and Ixtaccihuatl ; accented on the second and fourth syllables of the 
former, and third of the latter. But here in the city the Spanish 
influence has changed the accents, so that the last syllables are ac- 
cented instead, and the pronunciation is commonly : Popocatepetl 
and Ixtaccihuatl." 

" Domes everywhere," said Harry, looking out over the city, 
" Even this hotel has one. How queer ! " 



150 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

" That is just what I meant when I said that I would show you 
something curious," said Mr. Jersey. " When this building- was a 
part of the old Franciscan monastery the corner there was one of 
the chapels, and when the structure was remodeled into a hotel 
they let the dome stand, probably for architectural effect, which is 
certainly very good from the street." 

" It is really a beautiful dome. And the effect of that pattern 
of large yellow ornamentation on a ground of dark blue is rich. It 
is a pity they are letting some of the tiles drop out. But there is a 
common stovepipe thrust out at an angle through the side of the 
cupola, and smoking black smoke ! What can that be for? " 

" The kitchen for the hotel restaurant has been established in 
the dome, and they have in it the uncommon feature of a modern 
American range that burns coal, in place of the universal charcoal 
that requires no chimney, as you will see on looking over the roofs 
around here. And charcoal is really the thing for this place. A 
few American families here have tried ranges, but they find that they 
heat up terribly, and it gives the cooks pneumonia when they go out 
into the thin, cool air. There is a good reason for the most of these 
Mexican customs that strike us so behind the times at first thought." 

After dinner Eliot took Harry out for a stroll while the ladies 
took a carriage to do some shopping and Mr. Brinkley was occupied 
with some business matters. They dropped in to see Mr. Jersey and 
he joined them, saying that after so long an absence Eliot would 
need a pilot as well as Harry. " And I want to have the pleasure 
of seeing how the changes strike you," he added. 

" How is it I keep bumping into jieople as I 2)ass ? " asked 
Harry, after a while. 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. ISl 

His companions laughed. " I ought to have told you," said 
Eliot, " that here it is the custom, not only for teams in the street to 
turn to the left when they meet, as they do in England and Canada, 
but for people also on the sidewalks." 

" They have a way of doing some things quite different from 
our way," said Mr. Jersey. " One custom is just as reversed as that 
of the Turks who shake their heads for yes, and nod for no. There! 
See that man beckon to somebody across the street ? He is simply 
giving him a passing salutation. If he wanted him to come across 
to where he is, he would wave his hand away from him, like this, 
which we at home would take to mean, ' Go away ! ' " 

" There's a man standing in a window and clapping his hands. 
What does he mean by that ? " 

" Oh ! " said Eliot, " he's calling a carriage from the hack-stand 
over on that corner. It is a ' handy ' custom indeed, for the noise 
is very penetrating and quickly attracts attention. It is curious that 
here in America there should be a custom ' handed down,' so to 
speak, from the distant Orient, coming from the Arabs through the 
Moors to Spain, and brought by the Spaniards to Mexico. They 
clap the hands for a waiter in a restaurant, a servant in a house, or 
for anything else of the kind. With us we either have to yeU, 
or whistle, or sit still and wait." 

" These stores seem to be as good as you will see anywhere," 
said Harry. " Great plate-glass windows, and nice-looking goods 
displayed in them." 

" And don't fail to take note of the number of book-stores," said 
Eliot. " It seems as if there must be as many as there are in Boston. 
Charles Dudley Warner said that the book-stores of a city were a 



152 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

gauge of the intelligence of its inhabitants. So Mexico must have a 
large reading public. Frank, I'm impressed with one thing, and 
that is how stirring and bustling the city has grown. There are 
bigger, metropolitan-looking crowds in the streets, and they hurry 
around as in an American city. And these handsome new buildings 
going up everywhere ! These sidewalks, too, along here, so smooth 
and easy to the feet ; such a change from the uneven old stones. 
And those level wooden pavements." 

" There are several miles of those, but wood doesn't do well for 
pavement in this climate. We shall soon have one hundred and 
fifty kilometers of asphalt blocks, though." 

" Then Mexico will be a cleaner and better paved city than either 
New York or Boston." 

" Hello, there are two leaning towers ! " exclaimed Harry. 

" If you should see any that do not lean it would be more of a 
curiosity in this city ! " said Mr. Jersey. " Those two towers belong 
to the church of La Prof esa, and are good samples. Now look back 
to that corner at that handsome, richly carved building. That is 
the BibHoteca Nacional, the National Library, and the fence in front 
looks as if it were running down hill. But you will see that the 
building itself is lurching over like a ship at sea under a strong side 
wind. And see the line of the Portales, that long block with the 
arcades, ahead, sagging like a buckboard under the weight of two 
fat men ! " 

" What's the reason ? Earthquakes ? " 

" No, though it looks like an arrested earthquake. It is because 
this city, with these enormously heavy-walled buildings, is built on a 
marshy foundation, and the settling has been uneven." 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 153 

They walked along through the quaint old arcades, or portals, 
where the sidewalks ran under the first story of the buildings, a 
feature common to most Spanish and Spanish- American cities. At 
the central plaza, the Plaza de Armas, Harry recognized at once the 
great cathedral, from the many pictures he had seen. It is the largest 
church-building in America, and, with its annex, the Sagrario, or 
parochial church, fills one entire side of the great square, with a 
beautiful garden surrounding three sides of the edifice. In one part 
of the garden was a heap of ancient building-fragments ; grotesquely 
carved stones, including representations of serpents, toads, and fan- 
tastic idols, — remains of the great teocali, or Aztec pyramid temple, 
that occupied the site of the cathedral. " All through the valley 
the ground is full of Aztec relics," said Eliot. 

In the Zocolo, or central garden of the plaza, a fine military 
band was playing, as is the custom on every afternoon, and they 
stopped a while to listen. " Somehow the Zocolo has a changed 
look — Why, they have cut down the great eucalyptus trees ! " ex- 
claimed Eliot. 

" Yes, they said the trees took all the nutriment out of the soil so 
that nothing else would grow." 

" It is too bad ! Why, when Mr. Charles A. Dana, who is one 
of the best students of trees in America, was here in 1884, he would 
not believe, at first, that they were only sixteen years old. They 
were nearly as high as the cathedral towers, and enormously thick ; 
something over three feet, I should say." 

" The wood seemed nearly as hard as boxwood," said Mr. Jersey. 
'"' Those in the Plaza de San Fernando are almost as large, now." 

" Here is a proof, Harry, that the Mexicans are progressive and 



154: r THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

are quick to take up new ideas," said Eliot. " When Maximilian 
became emperor of Mexico this Plaza de Armas was an empty ex- 
panse of stone pavement, and it was the same with the plazas in 
every town throughout the country. The Empress Carlota thought 
it would be a pleasant feature to convert the centre of this plaza 
into a garden, and so this Zocolo was created. The Mexicans are so 
fond of flowers, trees, and such things that the idea became very 
popular, and the example here set found imitation everywhere. So 
now it is very rarely that a city, large or small, can be found any- 
where in the country, whose central plaza is not occupied by a 
beautiful garden, carefully tended and full of flowers. The people 
take o-reat pride in giving their cities an attractive appearance. But 
it seems remarkable in a country where until within a very few 
years the cities have been isolated, with communication difficult and 
infrequent, that such an idea should have spread so rapidly. You will 
find very few cities in our own country that take any pains in this 
respect. Even some of the largest cities, places of over one hundred 
thousand inhabitants, have not so much as a square foot of green- 
sward in any public place." 

They strolled through several of the interior courts of the palace, 
as the great building on the eastern side of the plaza, occupied by 
the various departments of the national government, is called, and 
gained some idea of its enormous expanse, for it is said to cover 
more ground than any other building in America. They looked 
through the lofty interior of the cathedral, with its elaborate altars 
and costly decorations, and then they went northward a short dis- 
tance through an ancient-looking, busy street to the Plaza de Santo 
Domingo, where they saw the old building, now tlie National School 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



155 



of Medicine, that formerly was the Inquisition, and before which, 
during the occupation of Mexico under the Empire, the French used 
to stand their prisoners and shoot them — condemned to death on 
the sHghtest pretexts and usually on no proof whatever. The sole 
motive of the cruel Marshal Bazaine in ordering these butcheries of 
many hundreds of innocent Mexicans was that of making the popu- 
lation orderly through fear. 

" How the old life and the modern are brought together here in 
this city ! " said Mr. Brinkley, as the party stood on the corridor 
balcony that evening, watching the dusk darken into night under 
the noble fresnos of the garden, while the incandescent electric 
lights glittered all around and cast a mellow radiance over the lively 
coming and going, and the animated groups of the hotel sitting and 
standing around in the open air. " Here we have an old convent 
transformed and made comfortable by the magic of nineteenth cent- 
ury invention. The life of the great toiling mass is that of the mul- 
titude in feudal times, while that of the upper classes is as advanced, 
in all externals, as will be found anywhere. It is the poverty, the 
degradation of the common people, that holds Mexico back ; that 
makes the civilized minority, as in Russia, depend ujDon a despotism 
for the maintainence of its power and privileges. The thing is, to 
make the intellectual and material advantages of the few the posses- 
sion of the many. Universal education will solve the question here 
and elsewhere, and free the country from the curse of inequality of 
opportunity that is as dangerous to the upjDcr classes as it is oppres- 
sive to the lower." 



CHAPTER XIII. 



RIDING HORSEBACK IN THE SUBURBS OF MEXICO. 




T TARRY liad never been on 
horseback, and it was with 
something of a sailor's trepi- 
dation that he prepared for the 
ride that had been arranged 
for the next mornino-. He was 
not a stranger to the saddle, 
^ however, for he was an enthusiastic 
wheelman and his bicycle had carried 
him for hundreds of miles over the 
smooth ways of the parks and the fine suburban roads around 
Boston. But he found the keen enjoyment of anticipation in look- 
ing forward to a new and untried pleasure. '• You will find no 
trouble," Eliot assured him. " A good Mexican saddle is as easy 
as an armchair." 

They had both bought the regulation Mexican sombreros the day 
before, and Eliot had brought his old Mexican riding-suit back with 
him. Seeing this, Harry declared that he was going to order a 
charro suit at once ; it would be fun to dress up in it at home. 
They found the horses in waiting for them in front of the hotel, in 
charge of a man from the stable. Mabel and Florence made their 
appearance on the balcony, in their riding-habits, and they spied Mr. 

156 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 157 

and Mrs. Jersey coming down the street with Nacho Andrade and 
another young man with him. 

" How delightfully picturesque these young Mexicans look on 
horseback," said Mabel. " They sit like statues, and their stirrups 
are so placed that there is ahnost a perpendicular line from their 
shoulders to their feet." 

" I wonder who that is with our Mexican friend," said Florence, 
as they drew near. " He must be an American boy, I should say, in 
spite of his Mexican costume." 

As everything was all ready, the young ladies went down and 
found Don Ignacio presenting his brother Pablo to Harry. " Your 
brother ! " exclaimed Mabel, " how can that be possible, Senor 
Andrade ? Surely he must be an American ! " 

" Indeed, Miss Sampson, he is really my brother," said the dark- 
eyed young fellow with a sincere smile. " But he is a Goth and I 
am an Iberian, you see, for in our Spanish blood many races are 
joined." 

Pablo Andrade was a slender youth of about Harry's height, 
with frank eyes of clear blue, light brown hair, and a fair face with 
fresh rosy cheeks. No one of the party, not even the blonde Eliot, 
was so Northern-looking in feature. In view of this, it seemed odd 
to hear the broken English, and note the gentle, gracious shyness 
with which he met Harry's hearty American informality of boyish 
friendliness. But their mutual glances expressed a genuine liking, 
a,nd the two boys were evidently destined to become good friends. 

" We are so accustomed to think of the Spanish as a Latin people 
that we forget the strong Northern element in their composition," 
said Mabel. 



158 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

" Yes, the Visigoths were as Northern in character as the Saxons 
or Skandinavians, and you can find their type, just as distinct as in 
Pablo here, all through Mexico as well as Spain." 

" Do you know," said Mr. Jersey, " that the word bigot comes 
from Spain, and was derived from Visigoth ? For the Visigothic por- 
tion of Spain had the reputation of having that hard, stern religious 
temperament that is expressed in the word. The Visigoths left a deep 
impression on the race, language, and institutions of the land they 
conquered, but with whose people they became assimilated." 

" And the Spanish word for moustache, higote, also came from 
Visigoth," said Eliot, " showing that the wearing of the moustache 
was a Gothic fashion." 

By this time they were all mounted and they started in a lively 
cavalcade. " How small these Mexican horses are ! " remarked 
Florence. 

" Yes, and when you get back across the border you will say, 
*^ What great lanky things these American horses are,' " said Eliot. 
" These Mexican horses belong to the most beautiful and intelligent 
breed in the world, — the Arabian, brought to Spain by the Moors, 
and to Mexico by the Spanish conquerors." 

" I notice one peculiarity here, already," said Harry, " the horses 
in Mexico all have tails ! " 

Pablo, who was riding by Harry's side, looked at hun question- 
ingly, as if doubtful that he had heard aright, and asked if it could 
be that the horses in the United States of the North were of a tail- 
less kind. 

" Artificially so ! " said Eliot, laughing. " There is a species of 
American called the Anglomaniac, and they have set the fashion of 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 159 

docking tlieir horses tails because the EngHsh formed the habit in 
hunting across the country, in order to prevent their horse's tails get- 
ting caught in the hedges when they leaped them." 

" There are a few foreign dudes here who do it, but there is no 
danger of the style becoming popular, for a horse so treated is un- 
marketable here ; no Mexican would buy such a guy." 

" Happily it has also become unfashionable with us, now," said 
Florence. " The leading ladies in the city — those most powerful 
in setting a social example, — have declared against it on account of 
the cruelty, and have agreed to own nothing but horses with long 
tails." 

" And so the bob-tailed nags are descending the social ladder, 
and have already reached the hack-horse stage," said Eliot. 

" Good ! good ! " cried Mrs. Jersey. " A horse looks mutilated 
and ungainly deprived of his tail. They might as well clip his 
ears." 

" If it were the fashion in England for horses to go lame in one 
leg," said her husband, " thousands of people would think it the 
most graceful gait possible, and spavined beasts would be at a pre- 
mium ! " 

All the horses of the party had the characteristic of long full 
tails and manes. Pablo rode a dashing pony, black as night, and 
Harry's steed in particular was the object of many admiring glances. 
Mr. Jersey, who had selected the horses for the party, said that 
" Bayito," as Harry's pony was called, was one of the best saddle- 
horses in Mexico. Harry took him to his heart at once, and de- 
clared that he would ride no other horse while in the city. He 
quickly felt himself at home in the saddle as if he had been a horse- 



160 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



man all his life. " Bayito " was a beautifully shaped little horse of 
the " buckskin " color that denotes a sturdy strength and power of 
endurance. His soft, expressive eyes were both intelligent and 
kindly, and every now and then he would give a vivacious little toss 
to his handsome head. He had a full, long-flowing mane and tail 
and forelock, of a rich, ruddy brown that in the sunlight was ahve 
with golden glintings. 

They went at a quick walk through 
the streets out to the Paseo de la Reforma, 
the beautiful broad pleasure-way, leading 
straight out to the castle of Chapultepec, 
which they had noticed with its bordermg 
line of shade-trees on the way to the hotel 
the morning before, running out from the 
great equestrian statue. That statue, which 
in Mexico is commonly called "El cabalHto " 
(the little horse), represents King Charles 
IV. of Spain, and bears an inscription 
which is the Spanish equivalent of " Pre- 
served as a work of Art." This is a 
delicate way of conveying the mference 
that it was not out of respect to the mon- 
arch that the statue was permitted to exist after Mexico rid herself 
of the Spanish yoke. It was the Avork of the great Spanish sculp- 
tor and architect, Tolsa, who came to Mexico m the last century as 
director of the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts. This statue, 
which is cast in one piece, is the first equestrian moniunent made in 
the New world, and is still called the best. 








THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 161 

Tliey stopped at a restaurant on the Paseo and dismounted to 
take a cup of coffee and a roll, at little tables in front, over- 
looking the broad sidewalk, while a man looked after their horses. 
The early morning air was cold, and the coffee warmed them up 
pleasantly. They set out at a quicker pace towards Chapultepec. 
" Bayito " showed a disposition to go still faster, and to keep 
him along with the others Harry was obliged to hold him reined 
in pretty tightly. " Corremonos un poquito ? " suggested Pablo, 
glancing inquiringly at Harry, who correctly inferred that the words 
must mean " Shall we run a bit ? " for, at a slight tap from the whip, 
the Mexican boy's pony shot rapidly forward. " Bayito " needed 
no urging to follow suit, for in a second he was off like a flash, run- 
ning at full speed over the level way. It made Harry catch his 
breath at first, while his heart seemed to leap into his throat. But 
the swift motion was fascinating ; he began to feel as if he himself 
were a part of the horse, as the long, quick bounds carried him 
rapidly ahead. Instinctively, with a feeling of exultation and a sense 
of mastery, he thought of himself at the helm of the Brynhilda, mth 
the main sheet in his hand just as he was now holding the reins, 
ploughing swiftly over the waves with the wind free on the quarter 
and all sail set. The two horses kept well abreast, and every now 
and then Pablo looked across to Harry with sparkling eyes and a 
friendly smile. They were not far from Chapultepec when Pablo 
reined in his pony. " Bayito," with evident reluctance, was induced 
to slacken his jDace in the same degree. " Como le gusta listed ? — ■ 
How you like, Meester Marsden, the fast going in the horse ? " said 
Pablo. The horses were drawing long, rapid breaths ; their necks 
were wet Avith sweat, and the two boys were also breathing quickly, 



162 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

with flushed, excited faces. " First class ! " cried Harry. " But 
suppose you call me Harry ! Then I will call you Pablo. We are 
going to be good friends, I know ! " and he extended his hand, 
which Pablo took heartily. 

" Hah-rree — amiguito Enrique ! We must then tutear — that 
ees, speak with ' thou ' the one to the other, as say good friends." 

" Say thee and thou to each other ? How queer that would 
sound ! Only the Quakers do that with us." 

" I mean hahlando Castellano, — in talking Spanish. It seegni- 
fies friendship that is eentimate." 

" Just the same as when we call each other by first names in 
English ! — I tell you what, Pablo, we'll teach each other. You say 
things to me in Spanish and I'll repeat them and tell you the English 
of it, and I'll talk English to you and you'll teU me the Spanish of 
it. 

The proposition was jojrfuUy ratified and the first Spanish-Eng- 
lish lesson was proceeding with much vivacity, when the rest of the 
party came galloping up behind. " Bravo muchachos ! " cried Eliot. 
" Good boys ! You are turning out a ' buen ginete,' — a good rider 
— already ; Harry." 

" That Bayito," said Mr. Jersey, " is a regular goer from Goville! 
He will not only run like the wind, but he wants to keep it up all 
day. Then he is gentle as a lamb besides, and every gait he strikes 
is wonderfully easy — it is like riding on velvet." 

They passed through the gate of the castle grounds and were 
soon riding beneath the grand old cjrpresses of the famous grove of 
Chapultepec. Many of the great trees, with trunks of enormous cir- 
cumference, had been standing since the days of Montezuma. It 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 163 

being January, their branches were leafless, but the long pendants 
of gray moss hung thickly like venerable banners. As they rode 
along beneath the sylvan arches it seemed as if they were in some 
solemn temple of nature, and for a while there was in the company 
an instinctive silence that was only broken by a clatter of hoofs. 
On one side the precipitous face of the hill rose abruptly, clothed 
with a tangle of wild shrubbery, and on the other, here and there a 
straiofht narrow aisle led off to the westward towards the Molino del 
Rey, making an impressive vista between the warm brown trunks 
of the ahuahuetes, as they call the taxus, or American cypress, in 
Mexico. They passed entirely around the hill and paused a moment 
to admire the greatest tree of all, known as the Montezuma cypress. 
In the midst of the garden there rose the simple, tasteful monument 
to the memory of the bra\e cadets of the military school who fell in 
defence of the castle against the Americans in the war with our 
country. Then they ascended the hill by the gradual incline of the 
winding road. At the gate there stood as sentry one of the cadets of 
the military school, the West Point of Mexico, that occupies all the 
summit in the rear of the castle, which is now the official residence of 
the President of the Republic. Catching sight of a young lieuten- 
ant inside, Eliot, recognizing an old friend, exclaimed : " Ah, there 
is Teniente Brito ! " He called to him, and received a hearty wel- 
come from the officer, who was one of the instructors of the school. 
He cordially invited them to pass inside. From the parapet 
before the castle they faced one of the most beautiful and celebrated 
landscapes in the world. At their feet lay the rich, cultivated plain 
of the valley, diversified with many trees. In its midst spread the 
great city, with the broad lake Texcoco glittering beyond, and all 



164 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

around ran the great girdle of mountains, culminating in the two 
lofty and snow-mantled volcanoes. The sun had now warmed the 
morning air, and everything was glorified in the clear, golden light. 
For a long time they stood in speechless admiration, noting detail 
after detail of a picture that seemed to contain no blemish upon its 
wonderful beauty. 

" Do you never tire of this scene ? Does it not grow common- 
place when you have it before you day after day ? " said Mabel to 
the young lieutenant at her side. 

" Never ! It grows more glorious the more I know it, and it has 
been before my eyes ever since I entered as cadet, ten years ago. 
And I am constantly finding new beauty in the scene ; effects of 
light and shade, and of atmosphere, that I never before noticed." 

" Much as I have rambled over this valley, there are many inter- 
esting spots I do not yet know," said Eliot. " Charley Holyoke, 
when he came North, told me about a most romantic place that he 
discovered and used to ride out to, off back of Chapultepec some- 
where. A paper mill was there. I wonder if it is far from here ? 
Do you know it ? " 

" The Molino de Santa Teresa, you mean," said Mr. Jersey. 
" Charley and I were riding out together when he discovered it. It 
is several miles out from here, back in the foot-hills. It is a place 
well worth seeing. Shall we ride out there ? " 

" By all means ! " cried his wife, enthusiastically. " That is, if 
the others — ? " 

They were all eager for going. " Then we'll make a forenoon 
of it," said Mr. Jersey. " Business can wait on a day like this." 

Bidding adieu to Lieutenant Brito, who promised to show them 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 165 



over the castle and military school if they would come out some 
morning, they set out down the hill and off to the westward, 
through the Bosque, as the grove is called. The ground gradually and 
evenly rose towards the foot-hills of the high western range, the 
Sierra de la Cruz, the Mountains of the Cross. They passed by 
handsome country villas, and along a road which three centuries of 
use by the feet of myriads of horses, donkeys and mules, and the 
torrential summer rains, had sunk several feet below the surrounding 
surface. For a considerable distance they skirted the great cemetery 
of Dolores, the largest around the city. Fields of the gigantic 
maguey, with the thick, sharp-pointed leaves somethnes eight or ten 
feet from the ground, bordered the road. This variety of the agave 
is cultivated all through this part of Mexico for the sake of the pop- 
ular beverage that is fermented from its milky-looking sap. 

" Wait a moment and I will show you how the peones mend 
their clothes on the spot, when they happen to tear them," said 
Ignacio. He took his knife and cut around the thorn-like end of 
one of these leaves, about an inch from the point. Giving a dex- 
terous motion, it was detached, and something like two yards of 
coarse fibre was pulled out of the leaf in six or eight parallel fila- 
ments. " Here you have a needle and thread all in one, and ready 
for instant use," he said. 

" That fibre is strong and will hold, though it wouldn't make a 
very pretty darn ! " said Eliot. 

Mounting continually higher and higher on the valley slope, the 
view behind them grew grander and more sweeping, as they turned 
to admire its varied panorama. The ground sloped more irregularly, 
and a broad ravine-like valley began to furrow it. They rode along 



166 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

beside this, and it grew narrower, with more precipitous sides, as 
they progressed. At its end stood a cluster of massive buildings 
amidst a large grove. 

" There is the mill," said Mr. Jersey. " And do you see those 
holes in the steep sides of the valley thickly dotted all around ? 
That is where the operatives live, in caverns excavated in the soft 
rock. Perhaps such dwellings are warm and dry, but it seems 
hardly the thing for human beings to live like animals in their 
burrows. And they go to work at six o'clock in the morning, and 
leave off at nine at night, earning but three reales, or thirty-seven 
and one-half cents, a day. It is the same in the factories all over 
Mexico." 

" It is a shame that human beings anywhere should live to work, 
instead of working to live," said Eliot. " For that is what it 
amounts to ; outside of their work they have no time left except for 
sleep, and to devour some coarse food. After childhood is over, 
with its frolics, what is left of life, except toil ? " 

" And here there is not much left even of childhood, for the 
little ones go into the mills almost as soon as they can talk plam," 
said Mr. Jersey. " The industrial conditions of Mexico are such 
that these things have to be, for the present. Some day they wiU 
improve, but now the poor people are so ignorant that they do not 
know enough to be unhappy in their lot ! " 

They rode past the upper side of the mill, and then down a steep, 
narrow path, bordered by a thick wall, on the precipitous side of the 
valley. They dismounted in a garden-lilie court in front of the mill, 
and left their horses in care of three bright-eyed boys. The pict- 
uresque buildings of the mill rose terrace-like against the slope. 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 167 

The place was formerly the convent of Santa Teresa, and several of 
the buildings were portions of the old convent. Eliot pointed out 
that they were fortified for a siege against robbers, like the mines 
they saw at Zacatecas. 

All around them they heard the refreshing melody of the bab- 
bling rush of waters. Down beside the mill there poured a clear 
stream in a series of cascades from a tunnel-like arch in the face of 
one of the buildings high up the slope, the bright water sliding 
swiftly down from fall to fall, enclosed in smoothly cemented masonry. 
Steps rose irregularly beside the stream, and the way, together with 
the water, was bordered with a profusion of flowers and shrubbery. 
These stairs led them to a broad level space overlooking the court-yard 
of the mill and the valley below. It was a sort of plaza where car- 
riages could stand, and was bordered by perpendicular, tree-crowned 
cliffs, in the face of which was hewn a chapel for the mill, with a 
commonplace ugly front. A pleasant woodland path rambled along 
the steep slope of the valley, and around through the grove to the 
top of the cliff. There were flowers of many kinds beside the path, 
and among them an abundance of violets, filling the pure air with 
their richly delicate breath. 

" Such are the romantic sites and Eden-like surroundinofs of our 
Mexican factories," said Mr. Jersey, as he led the way around through 
these charming scenes. " What a jiity the toilers within their walls 
cannot enjoy a life that matches the beauty of the world about 
them ! " 

As they rode cityward, their faces flushed and happy with exer- 
cise, Mabel said : " The pleasure of this ride alone would repay for 
the trouble of coming on this long journey to Mexico." 



168 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

They returned through the beautiful suburban city of Tacubaya,. 
where crooked, lane-Hke ways passed between the high walls of ex- 
tensive villa grounds. The walls, often venerable-looking and fort- 
ress-like, with massive buttresses, were crested with tangles of trailing 
growth, starry with flowers. 

When almost back in the City of Mexico, as they neared the end of 
the Paseo, Harry saw a great circular wooden structure a little to the 
southward of the circle where stands the imposing Columbus monu- 
ment. A similar structure stood a little farther away. " La Plaza 
de toros de Colon," said Pablo ; "the other ees the one of Bucareli." 

" The bull-rings 5 the places where they have the bull-fights," 
explained Mr. Jersey, who was riding near by. 

" The sport was forbidden within the Federal District when I 
was here before," said Eliot. 

" And when the authorities permitted it again, shortly after you 
left, they had a regular bull-fighting boom, and at one time there 
were no less than seven rings in the city. But now happily it ap- 
pears to be oil the wane, and there is seldom more than one fight on 
a Sunday afternoon. The best people are opposed to it, but it is 
such a long-established amusement among Spanish-speaking peoples 
that it is difficult to abolish it. How would you like to see a bull- 
fight, Harry ? " 

" I couldn't be hired to," replied the boy, firmly. 

" I saw one, and never care to see another ! " said Eliot. " It is 
exciting, but cruel." 

" Most tourists who come here want to see one, out of curiosity," 
said Mr. Jersey. " Although they take place on Sunday, many of 
our American visitors who strictly observe the day at home act on 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 169 

the idea of doing in Rome as the Romans do. Their scruples ' don't 
count ' in a foreign land. I can tell you a good thing on one of 
our countrymen. Last year there was an excursion party here from. 
Illinois, and it included a number of people from one of the smaller 
cities. Among them was an Orthodox Deacon who slyly went to 
take in the bull-fight one Sunday afternoon. On his return, he gave 
to the Sunday-school of his church a lecture about his trip to Mexico^ 
illustrating with a profusion of stereopticon views. Everything went 
smoothly until he prefaced a certain lantern-slide on his list with the 
words : ' Next, my dear children, we shall behold a picture, about 
the original of which I can of course only tell you by hearsay, since 
it represents the cruel national amusement of the Mexican people, 
which, moreover, takes place on the afternoon of the Sabbath day. 
I could not with my presence sanction an occasion so wicked, but 
since a view of a bull-fight chances to be included in this collection 
which I have secured for your delectation, I will exhibit it that I 
may the more strongly impress upon you the wrong-doing of habit. 
You will see — ' He had proceeded thus far when, to the astonish- 
ment of the audience as well as to his own unutterable consternation, 
there appeared upon the screen a view of one of the most exciting 
moments of the sport, in the foreground of which there was to be 
seen an unmistakable portrait of the Deacon himself, the most intense 
interest in the proceedings manifest in his familiar features. It 
seems that there was in the party a mischievous young man who did 
not like the Deacon. Catching wind of the Deacon's purpose to go to 
the fight he contrived to secure a seat in his neighborhood, and, 
taking advantage of a favorable moment, he made a successful snap- 
shot with the instantaneous camera that he had with him. Making 



170 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

a good lantern-slide from his negative, he contrived to substitute it, 
just before the lecture, for the bull-fight scene which it was proposed 
to exhibit ! " 

" There is another place that I have always intended going to, 
but have only seen from a distance," said Eliot, as their friends took 
leave of them at the hotel. " That is, the Penon." 

" Neither have we," said Mr. Jersey. " Suppose we take our 
next ride out there ? " 

" All right. How will day after to-morrow do ? Harry here, 
will be suffering from the effects of his maiden ride to-morrow, I 
suppose, and will not feel like going again so soon." 

The trip was agreed upon, though Harry protested that he felt 
all right and could go the next morning as well as not ; after his long 
bicycle experiences he would feel no effects from such a gentle-gaited 
steed as Bayito. After all, he was, however, pretty stiff in the 
legs the next day, but he felt in fine condition when the mem- 
bers of the same party appeared for the Penon ride early the second 
morning. 

They started in an easterly direction, going past the Palace and 
through a quaint old part of the city, where there was a sluggish 
canal, most picturesque in its surroundings, but most abominable to 
the nostrils. " It is all on account of the bad drainage of the city, 
which is built so nearly on a level with the lake that there is hardly 
any fall in the sewers," said Ignacio. " But now they are spending 
millions in carrying out the much needed new drainage-system that 
will convert Mexico from one of the unhealthiest, to one of the 
healthiest cities in the world. They are making a tunnel that will 
drain Lake Texcoco out of the valley." 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. I7l 

They passed out of the city Kmits at the Gate of San Lazaro, 
the Garita de San Lazaro, as it is called. The literal meaning of 
garita is " sentry-box." There they saw officials carefully inspecting 
the loaded teams that came in from the country. At every highway 
leading out of town there is a gate with an office of the city 
customs-service, and there a tax is collected on nearly all articles 
brought into town — including provisions, vegetables, fruit, fuel, etc. 
It is the same custom that prevails in Paris, Vienna, and many other 
European cities, and known as the octroi in France. 

They soon saw a broad plain stretching before them, and cross- 
ing a canal that smelt still worse than the other, they entered upon 
the smooth level. Something like two miles away the great 
rocky mass of the famous Penon rose out of the plain like an island 
at sea, with the broad lake shining like a band of silver just beyond. 
The plain was like a floor, and was covered with brown grass closely 
cropped by cattle. " We can let our horses out here for a good 
gallop," said Ignacio, who knew the way. " There are no stones in 
the ground, nor any obstructions between here and the Peiion." 

What a wild, exciting scamper they had ! Bayito was off like 
a shot, and Harry felt his veins thrill with a keen exultation as 
the beautiful horse bore him lightly, swiftly on, seeming almost to 
fly as his feet skimmed the ground with a quick touch and go. 
Harry kept him well reined in at first, so as to keep beside Pablo, 
whose black pony, sturdy and spirited as it was, was no match for 
Bayito. At last a desire to see how fast he could go impelled him 
to give his horse free rein, and Bayito dashed ahead like the wind. 
As they neared the Peiion Harry slackened his pace to let Pablo catch 
up. They found themselves far ahead of the rest of the company. 



172 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

SO they slowed down to a walk — something that Bayito was still 
reluctant to do. 

There was a large building at the foot of the hill, and here the 
party stopped. " We will take a look at the hot baths for a 
moment," said Ignacio. The building was formerly a monastery, 
and was now being reconstructed into a hotel, with a tramway line 
from the city to give access to the place as a health-resort. The 
baths were freshly fitted up in luxurious style. The halls and 
chambers were richly frescoed in designs based upon Aztec motives 
of decoration. In each bath-room was a large tank sunken below 
the floor, and in one of these the water was running, almost boiling 
hot, and filhng the room with steam. " If any of us have rheuma- 
tism, this is the place for a course of bathing, they say," remarked 
Ignacio. 

" No thank you ! " said Eliot. " That is not the kind of bathing 
we like, is it, Harry? But what a hot country Mexico must be 
underground! Nearly every city I know has hot or warm springs 
near by." 

At the foot of the precipitous slope they found a squad of 
soldiers quartered in a long, low building. Leaving their horses 
here, they induced one of the soldiers to guide them by the easiest 
route to the top of the hill. Here there was a view of marvelous 
beauty. They seemed to be in the centre of the valley, with an un- 
broken range of vision all around. The city spread away close by. 
The lower slopes of the mountains to the southward were veiled with 
a delicate dust-haze drifted against them by the breeze, and their 
heights were clear and luminous in the early sunshine. The great 
shallow lake spread away from the foot of the hill, and from its shore 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 173 

there came a salty sea-like smell that seemed very familiar and wel- 
come to Harry's nostrils. " I had no idea I should get a whiff like 
that in the heart of Mexico ! " he exclauned. 

The lake was like a mirror, with here and there a " cat's-paw " 
ruffling its glassy surface. The boats of fishermen, seining for the 
pescado hlanco, or little " white fish " so abundant in the markets 
of the capital, dotted the water. On its farther shore the dark 
mountain wall seemed to rise directly from the water, that reflected 
its long reach. White-walled towns, among them historic Texcoco, 
nestled apparently at the very edge of the lake. Beyond the dark 
range the two snowy volcanoes rose through the calm air in serene 
purity. 

" It is a scene for a poet," exclaimed Mrs. Jersey. " How glad 
I am we have found out this place ! We shall ride out here often 
now." 

" Probably not one tourist in a thousand knows anything about 
the Penon," said Eliot. " And it is one of the points best worth 
visiting around here. But I could find hardly anything about it in 
the guide-books." 

" Lake Texcoco is really wonderfully beautiful," said Mabel. 
" And they are going to drain it away, you say ? What a pity ! " 

" If your home were in our capital you would not think so," re- 
plied Ignacio. " The lake is fair to see, but when green and fertile 
fields take the place of that glistening water, thousands of our people 
will live where thousands now die — poisoned by the foul breath of 
the stagnant sewage." 

" The lake has been growing shallower and shallower ever since 
the Conquest," said Eliot. " Don Francisco de Garay, the great 



174 THE CRUISE OF A LAND- YACHT. 

Mexican engineer, told me that now it sometimes was dried up 
entirely when a steady wind drew across it for a number of days in 
succession, the dry, rapidly moving air sucking up the moisture like 
a sponge that is passed over a wet surface. The lake is but a few 
feet deep now. In the time of the Aztecs it was very deep, and 
when the Spaniards launched their ships upon it to attack Monte- 
zuma in his island capital, this Pefion was an island. You remember 
we were reading in Prescott, the other evening on the car, how the 
Aztecs showered their arrows upon the fleet of Cortes as it sailed 
past this place. The lake has shoaled because some of its tributaries 
now flow into it no long-er. The Cuautitlan river is carried out of 
the valley through the great tajo, or drainage cut, of Nochistongo, 
made by the Spaniards in the early days. We entered the valley 
through the cut before daylight. Enriquez, the great engineer of 
that day, proposed to drain the lake entirely away on a plan similar 
to that now being carried out. But the authorities thought it im- 
practicable, and substituted a tunnel at Nochistongo, which, after a 
disastrous flood from its caving in, was converted into the open cut 
— one of the greatest examples of excavation known. Other streams 
are kept out of the lake by the use of their waters for irrigation, and 
still another cause of the shoaling is the sediment brought down by 
the streams." 

Their guide led the party down the hill on the side towards the 
lake, but Eliot, Pablo and Harry lingered a few minutes to look 
around at various points. They thought they would descend by a 
shorter, though steeper way. Suddenly there came a sharp cry from 
Pablo, followed by a warning : " Cuidado con las espinas ! " (Look 
out for the the thorns!) Almost simultaneously Harry yelled "Ow! 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 175 

Ow ! " Pablo pointed ruefully to a lot o£ dry little ball-like frag- 
ments of cactus scattered everywhere over the ground, bristling with 
spines. The two boys had unwittingly stepped on them, and the 
needle-like points had penetrated the leather of their shoes and 
fastened themselves in their feet. " I thought a snake had bitten 
me ! " said Harry. 

" Carramba ! Como pican ! " (Gracious ! How they hurt !) cried 
Pablo, limping and half-laughmg at the same time. 

" Those chollas (pronounced choyas) are the porcupines of the 
vegetable kingdom," said Eliot. " Experience with them is enough 
to make anybody believe in the total depravity of inanimate things. 
It is said that they will jump at you of their own accord as you pass 
by, and I am almost ready to believe it ! I remember that the first 
ones I saw I felt a curiosity to examine. I had been warned of their 
danger, so I gingerly took it by one of the spines and lifted it to 
look at it, when the infernal thing seemed to give a spring and 
fastened something like a dozen of its sharp claws in the back of my 
hand ! Now you boys had better take off your shoes and stockings 
and let me help you pull the things out of your feet. It will hurt, 
for you will find your shoes almost clinched to your feet. Be care- 
ful now, before you sit down, or your trousers will be spiked on to 
your bodies, and you will not find it very comfortable riding back ! 
It is a peculiarity of cactus-spines that they are hooked at the end, 
like porcupine quills, and it is easier for them to go in than to come 
out." 

The spines were extricated at last, thanks to Eliot's offices as sur- 
geon, and by the exercise of extreme caution they avoided further 
encounter with the chollas. At the foot of the hill they found their 



176 THE CRUISE OF A LAND- YACHT. 

companions looking at some old relief-carving on the side of the 
rock. They were made by the Aztecs shortly after the Conquest, 
and represented gigantic heads of horses, with the elaborate harness 
of the olden days. Mr. Jersey suggested that they were possibly 
made for sacred purposes, since the Aztecs regarded the horses 
brought by the Conquerors with great veneration, and as supernat- 
ural beings. " On the other side of the hill there was once a colos- 
sal relief," he said. " It is spoken of by Humboldt, and various 
Mexican gentlemen have told me that they have seen it themselves. 
But it has now been destroyed by the quarrying of the rock." 




CHAPTER XIV. 

FROM HARRY MARSDEN IN MEXICO TO DAN MATTHEWS IN BOSTON. 

Haciende de San Andres, 

ESTADO DE MORELOS, MEXICO, FeB. 1 5, 189O. 

Dear Dan : — 

What a fine time we are having ! I meant to write 
several days ago, but there has been lots to do. We had a " close 
call " coming down here. But I won't tell you about it till I get to it. 
When I wrote last we had taken that second horseback ride. 
Since then we have had a good many more, all through the suburbs 
— out to San Angel, out to the old empty convent of San Joaquin 
near Tacuba, out to Churubusco where the battle with our troops 
was that the history teUs about, out to Coyoacan where there is a 
beautiful old deserted convent with a ruined tower that I photo- 
graphed and here inclose a blue print of it with some other snaps of 
mine taken all around where we 've been out to Mixcoac, out to 
Tlalpam, etc. It was fine everywhere, — only awfully dusty on the 
roads. But that's nothing. At San Angel, Don Manuel Andrade, 
who is father of Pablo and Nacho, has a beautiful great house 
where he lives in the summer, and in behind it there is a great 
garden like a park ; just as fine as it can be, with shady paths run- 
ning all around under the trees, and lots of roses and other flowers, 
and a big stone tank to swim in with water running in out of a 
lion's head in a high stone wall, with maiden's-hair ferns growing 

177 



178 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



in the chinks. The water runs out in a stream all over the garden, 
to irrigate it. The Andrades have a stunning house in the city, 
and we've been there several times. It has two patios — regular 

outdoor halls with fountains in the cen- 
tre, and arched galleries of carved stone 
all around, full of flowers. Folks don't 
put flower-pots in their windows here ; 
they keep them in the patio summer 
and winter. The windows open like 
doors and always have balconies where 
the girls like to stand and look down 
into the street. When a fellow gets 
gone on a girl he " plays the bear " — 
juega el oso — does the bear act, we 
would call it. He just walks back and 
forth before the house an hour at a 
time and keeps looking towards her balcony. If she takes any 
notice of him he's happy, and if she doesn't he knows it's no use. 

We went to the Andrade's to dinner and it was just fine. They had 
a lot of Mexican dishes on purpose for us, and I liked most of them, 
particularly the soup, called Mole verde (it sounds almost like Molly 
Yerdy) which is made of green chiles with the sting taken out of 
them, and is thick and green in color. Then they had Mole de 
Guacolote, made of turkey, sort of stewed, with red chile. They eat 
lots of chile in this country, but in the best families they cook Mexi- 
can things real nice, and not peppery enough to bite hard. When 
we went out to Guadalupe they were cooking all sorts of messes in 
the plaza, and I thought I would eat an enchilada, for it looked nice 




THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 179 

and smelt so, too. But one mouthful nearly took my head off, it 
was so red-hot with chile, and I gave it to a hungry-eyed dog that 
asked for.it with a most beseeching look. He swallowed it without 
a wink and asked for some more, although I thought it would make 
him paw his nose and wail loud wails like a dog in a restaurant one 
day when Eliot dropped a drop of ammonia under his nose for 
making himself too much at home around our table. The same 
dogs go to the same restaurants day after day, like regular boarders. 

The Andrades had tortillas, which are the bread of the common 
people, made of corn soaked in lye and ground fine while soft. 
They have a hulled-corn taste, and are thin as wafers, like griddle- 
cakes bigger than dinner plates, and sort of flappy. They are fine 
when spread with mashed aguacate and then rolled up. The regular 
thing just before desert anywhere in Mexico is /r^/o?es, (pronounced 
free-ho-less) or beans, stewed, and better than baked beans warmed 
over. Mexico beats even Boston on beans, for here they eat them 
every day. For desert they had tamales dulces, made of white corn 
meal done up in corn husks, sweetened a little, with some chopped 
almonds and raisins inside, and steamed, making a real nice little 
pudding in each wrapper, just big enough for one person. 

We went there to a tertulia one night — a sort of time when 
friends drop in for the evening without ceremony, and it was just 
jolly. Pablo and Nacho have two sisters, and they are pretty, too. 
The whole family is musical and everybody sings and plays piano, 
violin, flute, guitar, and other instruments, so there's a regular 
orchestra of them. Florence brought round her banjo, and she and 
Eliot sang some darkey songs, which the Andrades liked immensely, 
although they did not catch on to the funny j^arts. And the 



180 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



Andrades sang some Mexican songs that made us wild, they were so 
pretty. We had dancing and played games, and just to show us one 
of their customs they played the olla game they have during the 
Christmas holidays, which they call the jjosadas, — for on nine suc- 
cessive nights before Christmas it is the custom to celebrate — each 
evening for one of the posadas, or taverns, at which, according to 








ex, toco 



the legend, Joseph and Mary sought rest before the Saviour was 
born in the stable. They hung up an olla, a big earthen pot, made 
thin and brittle, and filled full of candy, in the patio corridor. Then 
they blindfolded one after the other, and the blindfolded one went 
round beating the air with a long stick, trying to hit the olla (pro- 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 181 

noimced ol-yah). At last it was given a good thwack that broke it 
and the candy went flying in every direction, so there was a big 
scramble for it, and the one who hit the olla got a prize. 

We went sightseeing round everywhere, to the National Museum 
and the Art Gallery, and through lots of splendid big churches, and 
all over the suburbs, and out to Texcoco on the other side of the 
lake where King Nezahualcoyotl — I'll give you a prize if you'll 
pronounce that at sight ; the coyotl part is the same as our coyote — 
had a great palace that is now only a big heap of dirt, and a summer 
palace that is only a heap of stones on a hill near the town. At 
Texcoco there are large glass-works, and a beautiful garden around 
a mill not far away, the Molino de Flores, the Mill of Flowers, (it is 
2i flour mill, too), with a lovely crystal stream with cascades in a wild 
mountain gorge. Another name that is a sticker for you is Atzcap- 
otzalco, one of the suburbs of Mexico. Eliot said an American 
friend of his couldn't possibly get his tongue round the word, and 
always spoke of it as " that name on the street-cars." 

One of the churches we went to see is that of San Pablo, which 
was confiscated by the government under the Reform laws. Lots of 
the domes and towers all over the city belong to churches and con- 
vents that were siezed and are now used for other purposes — stables, 
theatres, factories, schools, railroad freight-depots, etc. The church 
of San Pablo is used by Mr. Jersey's firm for a hodega, or storehouse. 
It is a big place, bigger than Trinity, and it looked queer to see it full 
of American plows, reapers, threshing-machines, steam boilers and 
engines, with the altars and sacred inscriptions and frescoes all 
around. On one of the altars there was a pile of soap boxes, just 
underneath some carved and painted cherubs, a combination that- 



182 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND- YACHT. 



made me think of some of the soap advertisements in the back part 
of the magazines. We also went through an old junk-market, where 
the girls bought a lot of rubbish and went wild over it. 

Villa Guadalupe, about three miles out to the north, is the most 
famous pilgrimage place in America, and there are sacred shrines 
and sacred wells, and all sorts of religious things out there, all be- 
cause in the early days an Indian had a vision of the Virgin Mary 
there which all the common people believed really happened. But 
the Church authorities at Rome take no stock in it and will not endorse 
the legend, so Mr. Bandelier told uncle Lemuel. But the people 
will have it and so their worship is tolerated, and they flock there 

by thousands from all parts of Mexico. 

There are lots of interesting things to 

see out there, and there is a queer gar- 

/ I k,f^\ den with walls and rocks all crusted 

over with mosaic-work made 

of broken crockery of various 

colors. 

One funny thing here is 
the " milk wagons," — noth- 
ing but burros with a big 
milk-can held in a kind of 
sack on either side ! 

Uncle Lemuel said it 

wasn't warm enough in the 

capital for him, and he decided to go down into the hot country, 

for a stay. The hotels are all crowded down in the tierra caliente 

resorts now with people getting away from La Grippe in the capital, 





THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



183 




and we couldn 't bring the Ariadne down here for the line is narrow 

guage. Don Manuel Andrade told uncle Lemuel of a friend of his 

who had a sugar hacienda, or plantation, near Cuautla. Pronounce 

that Kwoutla. His 

friend was in Europe, 

and it could be easily 

arrano^-ed with the ad- 

ministrador, or man- 
ager, to go there and 

live for a month or so. 

While the rest of us fopoc&ta^eti. 

were sightseeing, 

Eliot and Nacho ran 

down to look the place over, and they reported enthusiastically about 
it when they came back. So Uncle Lemuel engaged one of the pri- 
vate cars of the Interoceanie Railway to bring us down. He said 
that the transfer from the Ariadne to the Delfin was like that from 
a deep-draught yacht to a light-draught one, for navigation in the 
shallow waters was represented by a narrow-guage line. We couldn't 
get a special train, because all the engines were busy in construction 
work, and so we had to come by the regular, which was a mixed 
train, and loafed along at the stations to load and unload freight. 
But it was a mighty interesting trip all the same. Between two 
places, called Amecameca and Ozumba we went right close to the 
foot of the big volcanoes, so we could see the cascades running down 
from the melting snow over the rocks on the rugged slopes of 
Ixtaccihuatl. It was like the pictures of the Alps. There were 
pines and cedars all around us, and the houses had roofs just like 



184 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

those in Switzerland, made of shingles held down with heavy stones. 
Then while we were up in the thin mountain air we came to a 
place where we could see way off through the gaps down into the 
hot country, sloping down and away and melting into the blue dis- 
tance towards the Pacific coast. We could see the sugar-cane in 
great stretches of light green, with brown land all around, and it 
seemed like lakes. They were at levels half a mile and more below 
where we were, and an island of dark green trees in the midst of 
one of these lakes of sugar-cane was pointed out as Cuautla, where 
we should not arrive for two hours yet. 

It took lots of curves to get down so far. The slope was mostly 
bare open fields, dry and brown, and from the train we could see 
the track at a good many places far ahead of us, as it went squirm- 
ing down into the valley, something like a rope that has been thrown 
down on the ground and left just as it fell. The train continually 
changed its direction so that we got views on every side from one 
window, and they were splendid views too, with Popocatepetl grow- 
ing higher and higher above us as we went lower and lower. In one 
place the valley was bounded by a line of steep, high cliffs with rug- 
ged tops that looked like architecture, and one point looked 
exactly like a big castle with a square tower, that was way below us 
when we first saw it, and looming way above us at last. The train, 
going every which way, seemed as if it was waltzing, and the girls 
said it ahnost made them dizzy. 

At a station named Nepantla we waited a long time for the up 
train to come along and pass us. The station building was real in- 
teresting and was covered with scalloped red tiles and had a nice 
flower-garden. The agent was a pleasant old Spaniard — a. 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 185 

Gacliupin, Pablo called him, which is what the Mexicans call the 
Spaniards — and the conductor was a Gachupin too. The agent had 
some of the windows full of canaries and other birds, each' window 
making a big cage by closing up with wire netting the space made 
by the thick adobe walls, giving the birds plenty of room to fly 
round in. The girls admired his garden and he said he would esteem 
it a favor if we would go in and look about and pick all the flowers 
we liked. 

The engineer of our train was an American and Eliot and I were 
talking with him and he was awfully glad to get some home news- 
papers we had with us, when the other train came along. Hitched 
on behind all the freight-cars, the last thing in the rear, there was 
a smashed-up engine that had been ditched the day before on the 
new part of the line, with cab smashed off, smokestack carried away, 
and pretty well bunged up where she had rolled over. Our engineer 
looked at her and said that was no way to carry an engine like that, 
for she hadn't any tender and so was without a brake, and if the 
coupling should give way nothing could stop her running back down 
hill. We waited a few minutes for orders, after that train had gone 
along up, and we watched it crawl slowly up the grade that went 
along the steep side of the gorge, until it disappeared around a 
point. Our whistle had just blown for us to start and we were all 
on the train — us fellows standing on the rear platform. All of a 
sudden we heard a noise up the track, and we saw that smashed 
engine come tearing down the grade like mad, all by herself, for she 
had broken loose ! We rushed inside and told everybody to run for 
their lives, and everybody got out in a hurry, scared half to death, 
and put for the station. All the rest of the passengers heard us- 



186 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

yelling and everybody came piling out. Our train was on the main 
line and I thought it would be stove all to flinders, but the switch- 
man who had thrown back the switch after that train had passed off 
the siding was still near by and saw the engine coming, and he had 
presence of mind enough to run and throw off the switch so the run- 
away might pass to one side. But even then there was danger that 
it might jump the switch, and I would not have given much for our 
baggage. But before the engine got so far as a high iron bridge 
just above the station, it was going so fast that it could not keep 
the track at a curve and it jumped the rails and dove down the em- 
bankment like a shot, pitching heels over head, kicking up the dust 
in a big cloud, making the stones rattle down after it in a shower, 
going crash-rickety-bang ! and at last bringing up with a tremendous 
whack on the bare rocks at the bottom of the gorge where the 
stream tears along in the rainy season. I tell you I shook like the 
Brynhilda's mainsail coming round in the wind, and Pablo was white 
as a ghost and he said I was like an espanto, which is the same thing 
as a ghost. Florence fainted and everybody was fearfully excited, 
except uncle Lemuel, who took it as cool as a cucumber. We went 
and looked over the edge at the engine and there wasn't much left 
after her second wreck, except the boiler, which wasn't broken, 
although I should think it would have smashed all to bits against that 
hard rock. Eliot says that a cylinder is one of the strongest 
jDOssible pieces of construction and very hard to break. But there 
was nothing to be seen of the eight driving-wheels except some 
scattered pieces of broken iron. 

When we started, the air kept growing warmer and heavier, and 
at last when we beoan to run on a straioht track for the first time 



THE CKUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



187 



since the summit there was tall sugar-cane and green grass and lots 
of clear running water on both sides of us, and it was like July, 
That was at Cuautla, and we ran up a " Y " to a station that was 
made out of an old convent, with domes and towers and a carved 
stone front, and what was once the chapel was piled full of freight. 






/r^-^^v^- 




M..._i" 








fr., ,U..,,.,k 



RAILWAY STATION AT CUAUTLA. 
(Old cotivejit.) 



It is quite a city, but you can hardly see anything of it until you get 
into it, there are so many big trees, and most of the streets, except 
in the centre where the buildings are solid, are shady lanes with 
thatched huts, and brooks of water running round nearly every- 



188 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



where. There are lots of flowers on all sides, and palms, and 
bananas, and any quantity of fruit-trees of many kinds, with oranges 
and limes, but no lemons, except sweet lemons that haven't any taste 
to speak of, but smell fine enough to make up for it. They call 
limes lemons in Mexico, and lemons limes ; that is, limones and 
limas. 

A nice mule-team was waiting from San Andres, with saddle- 
horses for several of us. I was glad enough to see Bayito among 
them, for uncle Lemuel had had him engaged and sent on ahead, so 
as to surprise me. Pablo's and Nacho's horses were there too. It 

was three o'clock when we left Cuautla, 
and sunset when we reached San An- 
dres, which is lower down the valley, 
and still more tropical. It was fine 
coming horseback, with lots of strange 
things to see every minute. But for 
Uncle Lemuel and Aunt Maddie, in 
the carriage, the road was pretty rough 
in many places. The scenery is mag- 
nificent here, with the mountains all 
around in all sorts of shapes, and old 
" Popo " king of them all in plain sight looming up tremendously high 
and looking only a few miles away. When we arrived he was lit up 
with the afterglow, with his snowy top all rose-color against a sky of 
deep violet. 

Everything is mighty interesting here. It is a great sugar 
hacienda, and the house is like a palace in size, with big rooms, very 
plain, but neat as wax. There is a nice piano in the parlor, though,. 




THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 189 

and the floors are of red brick tile. Nobody cares for inside show 
here, in a climate like this, where you can sit outdoors in the evening' 
all through the winter. The corridors are the real parlors, and we 
sit there nearly all the time when we are around the house. There 
is a big flower-garden, and a great orchard with all sorts of fruit 
that grow here, and the trees are full of birds with flocks of little green 
parrots that chatter like fun, noisier than English sparrows, for they 
seem to be talking to each other. A fine river runs close by and 
seems just like one of the streams at the White Mountains except 
for the thicket of bananas along the banks, and there's good fishing 
in it. 

Don Alberto Peralta is the administrador of the place, the gen- 
eral manager, and he's a real Castilian gentleman, — a model of 
politeness, and he runs the big plantation in a live business way. 
His family is away, so he has had the house all to hunself, and he is 
glad enough to have our company. He sits at the head of the table, 
and the meals are just fine. He doesn't know English, and when 
there's any joking going on among us he wants to know what it is 
all about, and Eliot and Pablo explain it to him. Sometimes he 
can't see anything funny in it and looks perplexed, for it is difficult 
to explain some jokes in another language, you know, but others he 
sees the point of quick as lightning and then you bet he laughs 1 
Then he tells some Spanish joke that has to be translated to us. We 
are all learning Spanish pretty well, and I mean to keep it up at the 
Tech, for it is going to be valuable for an electrical engineer where 
there is such a field as there is in Spanish-America. 

Everything goes like clock-work about the house and place. 
The servants are all men and boys, and they glide around still as 



190 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



shadows, dressed in nothing but a loose cotton shirt and drawers, 
always fresh and white — quite different from in the City of Mexico 
where they seem to wear the same things until they drop off. Down 
here in the hot country it is a necessity, almost, for them to bathe 
every day, and so they get the habit of keeping clean. The sugar- 
mill joins onto the 
wing of the house, 
making three sides 
of a large square all 
together. It is run 
by power from the 
river, and is busy as 
a bee-hive, with the 
laborers coming and 
going all the time, 
bringing- in big bun- 
dles of cane to be crushed in the trapiclie, as they call it, where the 
juice runs out in a steady stream and a glass full of it tastes kind 
of nice once in a while. They even refine the sugar here into nice 
white loaves. The laborers live in a village by themselves just be- 
yond the huerta, or orchard, and they go to church in a chapel 
joining onto the other side of the house, — a beautiful building 
big enough for a city church, and it was built over one hundred 
and fifty years ago. 

Pablo and Nacho came with us by special invitation of Uncle 
Lemuel, and it makes it real jolly that they are here ; it helps us 
along with our Spanish, and they teach us Mexican songs and we all 
sit and sing in the corridor in the moonlight, and have music of 




hL°' C°""'7 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 191 

guitars and banjos beside. Pablo had an attack of the Grippe just 
before we came down, and his father thought he had better leave 
school for a while and get the benefit of the change of air. Nacho 
came down because he thought he might have the Grippe if he staid 
in the capital. But between us the truth is he has taken a great liking 
to cousin Mabel, and she seems to like him just as well, for the two 
are together pretty nearly all the time, Pablo and I are great 
friends, and we all three shall be, Dan, for I know you can't help 
liking him when he comes to Boston to enter the Tech next fall. 
He will come in August with his father, and, the very first thing, we 
will break him in for the salt water by a cruise on the Brynhilda. 
He has never seen the ocean yet. You couldn't tell him from an 
American boy by his looks. 

We take long rides all through the country, and see lots o£ 
strange things. The people mostly live in thatched huts made of 
cane or reeds, and the children usually don't wear so much as a single 
rag. A good many of their parents don't wear much more, and 
clothing can't be a very heavy item of expense in this part of the 
world. A considerable part of the day we fellows have no use for 
it ourselves, for there is a large swimming-tank in the huerta with 
water running in from the river all the time, and orange-trees shading 
it at one end, where there is a terrace paved with tiles and a bench 
of smooth stone for resting. We spend a couple of hours or so there 
every day. 

Once in a while we go fishing in the river, but we haven't done 
any hunting, for none of us like to "go round kilHng things." We 
caught an armadillo one evening though, down near the river, and 
I am going to try to bring him home for a pet. It's the funniest 



192 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

looking thing, with a thick shell, like plate-armor, and when we 
caught him he rolled himself up into a ball, which it would be pretty 
hard for any other animal to bite through. The girls were scared 
of it and shrieked when we offered to put him in their laps, but he 
is perfectly harmless and gentle, for he hasn't any teeth. They say 
it's first-class eating, and the people here call it a great delicacy. 
Don Alberto offered to get up an armadillo dinner, but I for one 
couldn't stomach it, it looks too much like a reptile, although it is 
really a mammal. I wonder if they serve it roasted in the shell ! 
There is a reptile here that they do eat, and that is an iguana, a 
great fat kind of lizard. I'd rather eat armadillo than that. Other 
queer things that they eat around the City of Mexico are mosquitos' 
eggs, from around the lakes, and maguey worms, great white grub- 
like things that they find in the leaves of the pulque maguey. Both 
uncle Lemuel and Eliot have eaten them, fried and raw, and they say 
they are finer than oysters, but you couldn't hire me to touch them. 

I thought I'd find Mexico full of snakes, and they say there are 
some, but I haven't seen one yet, so they can't be very plenty. One 
thing I'm disappointed in, and that is I hoped to see some wild 
monkeys, but there are n't any round here and they tell me they are 
not to be found till much nearer the coast, where there are forests. 
Tame ones are quite plenty for pets in the City of Mexico, and they 
are amusing fellows. It is fun to see them on the edge of a balcony 
where they are chained ; they will give a jump, catching hold with 
the end of their tails and dangling there. About all the American 
species have tails of that kind. 

There are lots of things I want to tell you about, but I haven't 
time and must wait till I get home. I am keeping up the log-book 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 193 

you gave me pretty well and have taken lots of instantaneous photos, 
so I shall be able to give you a fair idea of the voyage of the Ariadne. 
We shall stay here till early in March and then return to the capital 
for a few days, after which we shall travel around through the 
country. 

Write me some more about the Tech and how you are getting 
along there. When did you go over to the Point last to see the 
Brynhilda ? I'll tell you a good Mexican name for a yacht : 
" Malinche," the name of the Aztec woman that Cortes loved. But 
the trouble with lots of these foreign names for yachts is that people 
don't pronounce them right. The " Gitana," you know, for example, 
is a Spanish name, but the G is pronounced like H breathed hard, 
and the word, which means Gypsey, sounds like this : " He-tah-na." 

Remember me to all the fellows. 

Yours as ever, 

Harry Marsden. 



CHAPTER XV. 

EXTRACTS FROM THE LOG OF THE ARIADNE. 

City of Mexico, March 9, 1890. 

T TERE we are back on the Ariadne, and it seems hke home, 
although we hated to come away from San Andres, where it 
seemed Hke home, too. In the capital a week, now; more sight- 
seeing, rides every morning with the Jerseys and young Andrades, 
Spanish opera one night, dinners with friends other nights — Jerseys, 
Andrades, at United States Minister Ryan's to lunch, and two dinners 
to friends on board the " yacht " — regular round of festivities. 
To-morrow we " steam out of port" for a trip to Cordova and back, 
down on the Ferrocarril Mexicano, or Mexican Railway, the first line 
built in the country, from here to Vera Cruz. Or rather, the Ariadne 
goes without us as far as Puebla, and Uncle Lemuel has chartered the 
" light-draught " Delfin again, to take us over on the new narrow- 
guage line, the Interoceanic, so as to get rid of the dust on the Vera 
Cruz line, that section of it being the dustiest railroad in the world, 
they say. The Interoceanic used to be called the " Ferrocarril Inter- 
oceanico de Acapulco, Morelos, Mexico, Irolo y Vera Cruz," and the 
initials on the freight-cars were " F. C. I. de A. M. M. I. y V. C," 
which beats the " Big Four ! " They are building it from ocean 
to ocean now, and it's going to be a great system. 

Puebla, March 10, 1890. — We met the Ariadne here and are 

194 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 195 

on board again. It was fine scenery coming over, around to the 
east of Lake Texcoco, through the great pulque region where the 
big maguey plants cover the plains and hills in regular geometric 
patterns, being planted so as to form straight lines in several direc- 
tions. We saw the famous great prehistoric pyramids of Teotihuacan, 
with other ancient ruins all around, in the midst of a wide valley, 
and then we crossed over the wild outlying range of the great vol- 
canoes, which were almost constantly in sight, looming up over the 
pine-covered mountains all around us. A little before reaching 
Puebla we saw the other famous pyramid, that of Cholula, which 
has a beautiful chapel on top of it. We ran close to, and the city 
of Cholula was bristling with churches, just like Puebla, which is 
only a short distance beyond. This is a beautiful city, large and 
busy, over one hundred thousand inhabitants, they say, with much 
manufacturing, and many cotton mills along the river, and of them 
the first one built in the new world. There is a splendid great 
cathedral. The streets are so clean you could almost roll over in 
them without getting dirty, and the style of building is quite 
peculiar to the place — many of the houses being covered with 
tiles in all sorts of fancy patterns, and variegated in color. It 
is a Moorish idea, they say. Here is where they make the 
colored glazed tiles that are used to cover church domes in many 
parts of Mexico, and most of the domes here are ornamented that 
way. The people here are called Poblanos ; and the Poblanas, the 
Puebla women, of the peon class, have a beautiful costume very dif- 
ferent from that of other parts of Mexico. They wear their rebozos 
in a kind of jaunty way, sort of turban-like, and their dresses are 
richly embroidered. The volcanoes are closer than to the City of 



196 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

Mexico, and the grand peak of Malinche seems almost within a 
stone's throw of the city. 

City of Mexico, March 13. — Left Puebla morning of 10th in 
the Ariadne and joined the main line of the Mexican Railway at 
Apizaco ) curious old-fashioned-looking train — good American loco- 
motive, but no air-brakes nor Miller platforms. At place called 
Esperanza, which means hope, was a tramway line that went off a 
long ways into the country, with regular street-cars drawn by mules. 
Along here we had the first view of Mount Orizaba — a glorious 
great snow-covered volcano very much like Popocatepetl, only a little 
more dome-shaped. Here we changed locomotives, and took on a 
" Fairlie," a double-ender, like two engines joined in one, with the 
cab in the middle. The " Fairlies " are made expressly for 
heavy grades like those of this line ; the steepest of any railroad in 
America. At a place called Boca del Monte, seven thousand nine 
hundred feet above the sea, we went through a tunnel and found 
ourselves at the very edge of the high table-land. Wonderful 
views ! We were up among the pines and could look right down 
into gorgeous tropical scenery. We ran along the edge of a preci- 
pice with the beautiful valley of Maltrata nearly three thousand feet 
below, and could look almost straight down into the town of Maltrata, 
with the station which was ten miles ahead of us by rail ! Scenery 
indescribably grand, with commingling of tropical and temperate- 
zone vegetation, and snowy summit of Orizaba above dark, pine-clad 
slopes. Vegetation much richer on Gulf slope than on Pacific slope, 
as in Cuautla valley, because atmosphere is dry there and moist here. 
Stopped over night at Orizaba ; beautiful tropical city, full of rich 
vegetation. 



%^ 




THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 199 

Next day went to Cdrdova and back, through scenery equally 
rich and beautiful, with sharp curves and steep grades descending 
from valley to valley, as before. Crossed great bridge of Metlac, on 
a curve ; bridge was washed away last year. Cordova is centre of 
coffee, sugar, and tobacco region, and is pretty city. Saw many 
Indians from surrounding villages ; costumes differed according" to 
locality they came from. Weather hot and steamy, but very com- 
fortable on board Ariadne. Even more interesting climbing up to 
table-land than going down ; seems as if I could never get tired 
of it. 

Morelia, Estado de Michoaccm, March 20, 1890. — Uncle 
Lemuel chartered " light-draught yacht " Delfin from Interoceanic 
again, to come on this trip over Mexican National, narrow-gauge — 
Compania Camino de Fierro Nacional Mexicana, as they call the 
company now. Another lot of wonderful scenery on the way here. 
Climbed straight up out of Valley of Mexico to height of ten 
thousand feet above sea at Salazar, where it seemed like being in 
Maine or New Hampshire, and the air was chilly like a late October 
morning. Crossing Sierra de la Cruz here, came down into broad 
upland valley of Toluca, with the fourth of the great snow-clad 
mountains of Mexico rising out of it — the Nevado de Toluca, an 
extinct volcano with a lake in its crater. They say the lake never 
freezes, although so high. Stopped over a day at Toluca, capital of 
State of Mexico. A beautiful clean city, weather always cool, for it 
is over a thousand feet higher than the City of Mexico. Handsome 
great market-house, with long vistas between massive stone columns, 
richly decorated. At Acambaro, down in a warm country aoain, 
took the branch line for Morelia, passing along shores of beautiful 



200 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



Lake Cuitzeo, a great sheet of water with an archipelago of moun- 
tainous islands. 

Morelia is the favorite city of Mexico for Uncle Lemuel, as it is 

for Mr. Church, who first told him about it. Its climate is perfect, 

neither too warm nor too cold, and the place is full 

of beauty of all kinds. The cathedral has the 




CATHEDRAL GATEWAY, 
MORELIA. 



most beautiful architecture of any in Mexico. Mabel says she is 
sure that the Alameda must be an enchanted garden, with a mac^ic 
palace and a sleeping princess hidden in its midst. Morelia is the 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



201 



capital of the State of Michoaean, and used to be called Valladolid, 
after the Spanish city, but was changed to Morelia in honor of the 
patriot priest Morelos, who was born here and who succeeded Hidalgo 
as the leader of the revolution against Spain. Iturbide, who gained 
Mexico her independence, and was first dictator and then emperor, waS' 
also from this city, and so Morelia is called " the mother of patriots." 




A MORELIA MARKET-PLACE. 



Lake Pdtzcuaro, March 27, 1890. — We came by special train 
six days ago and are stopping at a pleasant hotel close beside the 
lake, made for a pleasure-resort out of the great house of an hacienda. 
It is one of the healthiest and most beautiful parts of Mexico. The 
lake is seven thousand feet above the se?, and the bracing air is 



202 THE CRUISE OP A LAND-YACHT. 

sweet with the smell of the pines on the mountains all around the 
lake. It is called the most beautiful of the three large sheets of 
water that give this part of the country the name of " the lake 
region of Mexico," the other two being Lakes Chapala and Cuitzeo. 
Chapala is the largest of all, but Patzucaro is by no means small, 
being as much as twenty miles long by ten wide. It is full of beauti- 
ful islands ; several of them have fishermen's villages on them, and 
the queer-shaped nets of fishermen, put up to dry, look something 
Hke monstrous butterflies. The water of the lake is clear as crystal ; 
full of fine fish and covered with wild fowl, some of which have gor- 
geous plumage. The lake is rising in height, and the captain of the 
curious little steamer that runs here says that the most troublesome 
obstacles to navigation near the shore are the submerged stone walls. 
There is no stream flowing out of the lake, but there is said to be 
an underorround outlet somewhere, and it is believed that the reason 
why the lake is rising is that the outlet was stopped up by a severe 
earthquake a few years ago. Others say that there never was any 
outlet, and the reason the lake is rising is that there happens to be 
just now a period, or cycle, of greater rainfall than the average. 
But there is one thing that makes it certain that there must have 
been a subterranean outlet, and that is, that the water of the lake is 
fresh ; if there were no outlet it would be salt, for that is the case 
everywhere with such lakes. 

The City of Patzcuaro is only a little ways south of here, back 
from the lake, among the hills, with queer, narrow streets and very 
interestmg. We are having a fine time here ; riding around the 
country, boating, fishing, swimming, and making excursions on the 
lake m the steamer, which Uncle Lemuel chartered for ten doUars a 



THE CRUISE OP A LAND-YACHT. 203 

day. It is curious that the Indians do not have sails to their craft ; 
they have big dugouts and use paddles and poles, but never knew 
anything about sails until one of the American railroad men here, 
who came from the coast of Maine, rigged up a boat which the 
Indians thought as wonderful as the steamboat. I have been taking 
Pablo out in it considerably, and it made me feel like being at home 
to have sheet and tiller in my hands once more. 

Yesterday we all went on the steamer down the lake to the 
ancient Indian town of Tzintzuntzan, which, in the early days of the 
Conquest was one of the chief places in the country. They say the 
name means " humming-bird," and it is a sort of imitation of the 
noise made by the bird. There is an old church there, with its yard 
full of some of the largest and most beautiful old olive trees that 
Uncle Lemuel ever saw ; not surpassed, he says, even in the Holy 
Land. In the church there are two old pagan relics near the altar ; 
two old stone images of mountain lions, probably used as idols in 
the ancient days, and they say that the Indians hold them as sacred 
to-day as any of the Christian emblems in the church, for they are 
still fully half pagans. In the sacristy there is one of the finest 
paintings in all America, pronounced a genuine Titian, and repre- 
senting the " Entombment of the Saviour." It was given to the 
church by the King of Spain, and although the Indians have no idea 
of its artistic value they hold it so sacred that no money could in- 
duce them to part with it. Mr. Church was the first American to 
discover it here, and make it known. Charles Dudley Warner was 
the first to describe it and since then considerable has been written 
about it by tourists. 

City of Mexico, April 7, 1890. — We have been on the go so 



204 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 




much I have only just found time to write 
up my log. We got back here March 30 
and that evening took the night train up the 
Central in the Ariadne, reaching Irapuato in 
the morning and from there over the Guada- 
lajara Division all day till 4:45 in the after- 
noon, passing close by Lake Chapala at 
Ocatlan, but seeing nothing of it, for it lay 
out of sight 



beyond the 
great stone bridge crossing the 
head of the Rio Grande, or Rio 
Santiago, as the Lerma is called 
after it leaves the lake. It is a 
larpfe river and we ran beside it a 
considerable distance. Guadala- 
jara is a fine city, and the second ^ 
great centre in Mexico — a genu- ^ 

ine capi- 





tal. We 

all liked it immensely, although not so 
ancient-looking as it really is, they fixed 
and painted it up so freshly to celebrate 
the finishing- of the railroad something: over 
a year ago. It is the capital of the great 
State of Jalisco, and is the best run city 
in Mexico ; ^'ery neat, no beggars allowed 
anywhere, fine schools and other public in-- 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 205 

stitutions, one of tho finest and largest theatres in the world, and 
dogs all licensed just like at home. Only five thousand feet above 
the sea, and climate fine. But the most wonderful thing around was 
the great Barranca de Portillo, the deep gorge of the Rio Santiago, 
only five or six miles out of town. We all went down into it, for 
Mr. Blake, the pleasant American civil engineer who lives in Guada- 
lajara, told us so much about it that Uncle Lemuel and Aunt Maddie 
said they were bound to make the trip even if it was a rough one. 
We went on burro-back, for the road 
was only a narrow path, steep and wind- 
ing. It was a sheer descent of at least 
-two thousand feet to the bottom of the 
T^arranca, and the climate was hot and 
intensely tropical and scenery wonderful. 
It seemed skittish enough at some points 
going down, and we were nearly two 
hours from top to bottom, the way was 
so winding. At the very wildest places 
the guide would tell Eliot about people being waylaid and robbed and 
murdered there, and when Eliot would translate what he said it 
would fairly make our hair stand on end, although we knew there 
could be no danger with a party so large as ours. It seemed strange 
enough to be down there in such a different climate, beside the large 
river, and look up at the steep cliffs on the sides, as if we were at 
the bottom of a big crack in the earth. The narrow strips along the 
river were carefully cultivated with sugar-cane and all sorts of trop- 
ical fruits. 

One fine fruit in Guadalajara we had was the " melon zapote," 




206 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



which was not a zapote at all, but a variety of the papaya, the kind 
of palm-tree that I saw first in Cuautla. I did not like the papaya 
fruit at all ; it looks like a melon, but it is filled with small seeds 
that resemble caviar and taste like nasturtium ; the fruit had a 
butternut flavor. But the melon zapote tastes very much like a real 
muskmelon, only finer, and without the string-yness of a melon. 

Near Guadalajara is where they make the famous pottery, and 





natural-looking- little statuettes. It is mostly done at San Pedro, a 
large suburb where the wealthy families go from the city for the 
summer. Pantalon Panduro, the best modeller of all, makes a 
faithful likeness after just looking- at a person, and brings it round a 
day or two after. 

We also went out to see the great Salto de Juanacatlan, the 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



207 



grand waterfall in the Rio Santiago known as the " Niagara of 
Mexico." It is really a splendid sight, and being only about fifteen 
miles from Guadalajara, that city will probably be furnished with 
electricity for light and power from there some day, for the falls 
give at least thirty thousand horse-power now. 

Aunt Maddie, ^ho knows all about public charities, says she has 
never seen such a fine asylum for orphans and poor people anywhere 
else as the Hospicio in 
Guadalajara. 

On the way back we 
stopped over at Queretaro, 
the capital of the State of 
that name. It is a very 
interesting place, with a 
soft, warm climate, and 
surrounded by a rich and 
beautiful country. There 
are lots of fine churches 
and ancient convents fall- 
ing to ruin. Everybody 
was delighted with the 
chapel of Santa Clara that 

Hopkinson Smith described so beautifully in his " White UmbreUa 
in Mexico." That and Janvier's guide have helped us immensely in 
enjoying our trip. Queretaro is the place where Emperor Maximilian 
was besieged by the Republican troops under President Juarez and 
is particularly interesting on account of its association with that 
event. We drove out to see the place just outside of the city, at the 




208 THE CRUISE OF A LA^*D- YACHT. 

Cerro de Campanas, the Hill of Bells, where Maximilian was shot 
with his two leading generals, Miramon and Mexia. A Mexican 
officer who was there told Eliot that they were shot at the very in- 
stant of sunrise, so that they did not see the sun itself, but fell dead 
just as its first rays struck the top of the hill on whose side they 
stood. 

They have different ways of carrying water in different Mexican 
cities. In Queretaro they carry it in jars on rough-looking wheel- 
barrows ; in Acambaro in two jars hung from a wooden yoke across 
a man's shoulders, and in the City of Mexico men used to carry it in 
jars nearly as tall as themselves, slung on then* backs, but now they 
have public hydrants all over the city and so there are no water- 
carriers. 

We went out into the Canada de Queretrao, which is a nar- 
row valley full of tropical gardens and dense vegetation : goino- 
by horse-car, or rather mule-car. The railroad runs through the 
Canada on the way to Mexico, so we got another 
fine sight of the place as we took the day-train 
back, and it was well worth seeing a second time. 
A magnificent great aqueduct that supplies the city 
crosses the valley on tall, 
slender arches of stone, 
and the railroad runs di- 
agonally through one of 
the arches. A little ways 
beyond are the Hercules 
Mills, the largest cotton 
manufactory in Mexico, 




THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 209 

with a factory village of several thousand population. The water- 
power for the mills comes from a tunnel running into the side of the 
mountain about a mile, and the water coming out is very warm, so 
that near the mouth of the tunnel there is a fine bathino'-establish- 
ment, outside of which there is a large basin among the trees and 
shrubbery, which is used by the operatives and other poor people. 
Queretaro is the place where the treaty of peace between Mexico and 
the United States was signed on May 30, 1848. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

TREASURE-YIELDING GUANAJUATO AND SAINT LOUIS 
OF THE TREASURE. 

^^ T ^ TELL, I expect that our last trip will be the best of all," said 
' ' Mr. Brinkley. " I had no idea when we left Boston that 
the Tampico line would be finished in time for us to go over it, but 
luck is with us. Mr. Whorf tells me that the scenery is the finest to 
be found on any railway line in Mexico, and my friend Mr. Jackson, 
the general manager of the Mexican Central, who has just returned 
from the grand celebration in honor of the opening of the.line has 
kindly arranged it so that we can see it in the pleasantest manner 
possible. We are going to have a locomotive to take our car down 
and back from San Luis Potosi as a special, so that our movements 
will not be hampered by the schedule requirements of any regular 
train, and we can stop along at any place we may choose where there 
is anything we care to see, and so take as long for our trip as we 
may wish. That is the way Mr. Whorf 's party did, and that appears 
to be the only satisfactory way to do where there is so much to see. 
According to what they tell us, it is a pity we cannot give a month 
to it ! " 

Mr. Whorf was the assistant general manager of the railway, and 
he had lately been over the new line in the first train to go through 
to Tampico, and to pass over the last rail. Mr. Brinkley had been 
talking with him and some of his party, and their accounts had fired 
him with enthusiasm to go and do likewise. 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 211 

On the next evening, xipril 10, they bade farewell to the Mexican 
capital where they had passed so many pleasant days. As the party 
clustered upon the quarter-deck of the Ariadne while the train glided 
out of the station, they were given God speed by numerous friends 
whom they had found and made there, not the least among whom 
were the Jerseys and the Andrades. " Good-bye ! " and " Buen 
viage ! " (Good voyage) were shouted for the last time, and they 
watched the fluttering handkerchiefs snowy in the bright electric- 
light of the train-house until with heightened speed they vanished 
in the distance. Ignacio and Pablo Andrade were to make the trip 
with them to Tampico. The two young Mexicans had been so gen- 
uinely kind, and had done so much to give pleasure to his party, that 
Mr. Brinkley desired to give them some special token of his appre- 
ciation, and so he had invited them to join them on this last trip and 
occupy the spare beds in the Ariadne's parlor. It was ten minutes 
past eight o'clock when they left, and they at once sat down to sup- 
per. It was a particularly merry party that evening at table and 
afterwards, in the dining-room, where the young people played the 
piano and sang English and Spanish songs alternately, while at the 
forward doorway George and Sam and little Pete looked and listened 
with delighted eyes and ears. " Come boys, we must have a minstrel 
act as a grand finale ! " cried Eliot, and George and Sam were in- 
duced to take the banjo and give them a plantation duet, while Pete 
indulged in a break-down with bone accompaniment, to the huge 
enjoyment of the Mexican youths, who had never seen anything of 
the kind before. 

They had arranged to give a day to Guanajuato, the great 
mining city, and capital of the State of the same name, one of the 



212 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

largest and richest in Mexico. Both Mr. Brinkley and Eliot had 
been there before, and they agreed that by all means it would not 
do to miss sight of one of the most picturesque cities in the world. 
Guanajuato, being off the main line of railway, at the end of a short 
branch, was visited by comparatively few of the tourists who annually 
came to Mexico and who did not take the trouble to go out of their 
iv^ay very much. 

At Silao the next morning they were transferred to the Guana- 
juato branch, and were soon climbing up into the rugged mountains 
to the eastward ; the famous treasure-range that had yielded some of 
the greatest fortunes in old Spain, as well as proudest titles of 
*^ nobility," titles which are usually founded on money, or base ser- 
vices to monarchs, or other ignoble things. 

The railway ended at the suburb of Marfil, five kilometers out of 
Guanajuato, and they there took the tramway for the city. The 
route was bordered by odd-looking buildings belonging to the 
" haciendas de beneficio," or reduction works for converting the ore 
from the mines into silver. There were high-peaked roofs, groups of 
towers and turrets, and arches and massive walls. The large city of 
Guanajuato, with its sixty thousand to eighty thousand inhabitants, 
lives upon the mining industry — the mining and reduction of ore. 
When the mines are exhausted, as sometime they must be, the 
massive place, built as if to endure for ages, will be deserted by its 
population and fall into ruins. But there appear to be no signs of 
it yet, though mining has been going on for something like three 
centuries and at least a billion of dollars in silver and gold have 
been taken out of the surrounding mountains. 

The city rose before them, terrace-Hke and billow-like, with its 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



2ia 



li ^ 



H^^juUo 



masses of buildings losing themselves in the various side valleys extend- 
ing up into the mountains. They wound through a tortuous, busy- 
looking street with high buildings, and from the end of the tramway 
were conducted to a 
snug hotel facing a 
little triangular pla- 



za with a pretty gar- 
den and music pa- 
vilion. Here they 
ordered lunch at 
noon-time, and pro- 
ceeded to stroll 
about the city. 
" How fascinat- 
ing!" exclaimed 
Mabel. "There is 
a picture at every 
step ! How every- 
thing forms itself into a subject for an artist ! No wonder 
Hopkinson Smith was enchanted. The lay of the land ; those steep 
cliffs towering all around us; the buildings climbing onto the slopes; 
the architecture ; the color ; — everything ! " 

" Do you see how you might step from the flat roofs of some of 
these houses out into the street behind ? " said Eliot. 

" And some of these streets are so narrow you can stand in the 
middle and touch the house-walls on each side ! " exclaimed Harry. 

" What delightful pavements ! " cried Florence. " These peb- 
bles are nice and smooth to walk over. And to think of street after 




214 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

street being inlaid in these pretty patterns with lines of lig-ht-colored 
stones ! How clean, too ! Why, actually, if there isn't a man 
going around and sweeping up dirt with a dust-pan and brush — 
a wooden dust-pan ! " 

" It is a pity they don't extend their ideas of cleanliness to their 
drainage-system," said Eliot. " Whew ! Let's get away from the 
neiofhborhood of that river — or where there is a river when there is 
any water ! " 

" That is the great need of Guanajuato — a good sewerage-sys- 
tem," said Ignacio. " For the lack of it, their death-rate is the 
highest in Mexico. And they could easily have it, as Mr. Blake 
has shown them, and make themselves one of the healthiest cities in 
the republic." 

They climbed to the edge of a cliff overlooking the city. A 
tangle of the thorny growth characteristic of the table-land grew 
near the edge of the precipice ; maguey and prickly-pear, while the 
tall columns of the organ-cactus formed a sort of frame for the pict- 
ure before them — the city filling the irregular valley and the 
mountains rising high on all sides, with large mining-villages on the 
surrounding hillsides and summits, clustered about the castle-like 
structures of the works and the stately domes of churches. 

'•' HoAv we can trace the narrow crooked streets ramifying in and 
out among the buildings like veins," said Mabel. 

" There are only three or four streets in the whole city where 
you can drive a carriage," said her brother. 

" What is that building like an amphitheatre down there, that we 
can almost toss a stone into ? " asked Florence. 

" That is the theatre," said Ignacio. " It is a magnificent mass- 



THE. CKUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 215 

ive structure, and is going to cost very much. They have been 
years building it and have not roofed it in yet, but sometimes they 
have j)erformances there. Do you see that large gloomy-looking 
building down there ? That is the Castillo de Granaditos, where 
the heads of the four patriots, Hidalgo, AUende, Aldama and Jimenez, 
were exposed for a long time. Their heads were brought here from 
Chihuahua, where they were shot, becau^se this had been the centre of 
the revolution. Dolores de Hidalgo, where the revolution started, is 
in this State, and one of the first things the revolutionists did was to 
capture Guanajuato for the sake of the means which the wealth of 
the mines gave them to carry on the cause. There were bloody 
scenes in this city more than once. When the Spaniards re-captured 
it, several thousand of the inhabitants, men, women and children, 
were driven into the market-place until it was crowded, and then, by 
order of the Spanish commander, they were all shot down by the 
troops, so that the streets literally ran rivers of blood." 

" How frightful ! " said Mabel, with a shudder. 

" It was in revenge for the massacre of the Spanish garrison by 
the revolutionists," said Ignacio. " War is always terrible." 

After lunch they all set out on a ride to the Yalenciana mines, 
the most famous of the Guanajuata group. Mr. and Mrs. Brinkley, 
who had confined their strolling to the lower levels of the city, while 
the young people clambered along the hillsides, decided to go on 
burro-back, while horses were obtained for the others. As they 
started, there was considerable merriment over the figures cut by the 
two heaviest members of the party mounted upon the meek little 
beasts. " Twelve arrobas, — that is, three hundred pounds — is the 
regulation load for a burro," said Eliot. " So the heaviest-loaded 



216 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

of these two burros has a margm of at least seventy-five pounds." 
" Only think ! Our last horseback ride in Mexico," said Florence. 
" We must make the most of it." 

" What a pity I haven't Bayito ! " said Harry. 
The Valenciana was high up on the mountain-slope, a league 
from the city. They enjoyed a succession of glorious views on the 
way. Below them the city filled its cup-like valley, and the vast 
plain where ran the main line of the railway spread out wider and 
wider in the distance, growing bluer and more unsubstantial in ap- 
pearance as its expanse receded in the clear air towards the mountains 
that notched the horizon in the dim distance. Before them at the 
mine the great church towering above the village of the miners' 
dwellings grew larger and more imposing as they approached. They 
passed enormous heaps of rejected ore on the way, but, as they con- 
tained many plums of richer stone there were numerous men about 
them picking them carefully over on their own account, paying the 
company a certain rental for the privilege. They were shown the 
main entrance of the mine at a great hexagonal shaft, that seemed, as 
they peered cautiously down into its indefinite depths, as if it might 
reach to the centre of the earth. In reality it was five hundred 
meters, or nearly seventeen hundred feet, deep. It was walled in by 
thick masonry, and there were four hoists worked by a steam-engine 
— two for ore, and two for enormous iron buckets for draining the 
mine ; when swung out above a large vat beside the shaft a trap in 
the bottom of the bucket would open, letting drop a torrent of water. 
The water was valuable for use in the boilers, and every drop jjossible 
Avas saved, for it is a precious commodity in Guanajuato and its 
neighborhood. In the vat were condensmg pipes to cool the ex- 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 217 

haust steam from the engine and convert it back into water to be 
used aofain in the boilers. 

The superintendent of the mine offered to show them how deep 
the shaft was. The hoist was stopped, and a large ball of rope-yarn 
wound around a heavy stone was saturated with j)etroleum and sus- 
pended by a wire over the opening. As soon as it was still it was 
set on fire and let drop. It made a startling sight as it darted down- 
ward with a hoarse roar and trailing flames like a meteor, lighting 
up the dark sides of the shaft. It seemed to grow smaller and 
smaller, until it dwindled to the semblance of a glowing bullet. Its 
noise came up in continual reverberations. Then for an instant it 
was seen to light the inky surface of a pool into which it plunged, 
and, with the quenching of its light a denser darkness than ever 
seemed visibly to well up from the depths and fill the shaft, as if the 
water itself had by some magic spell been made to swell instantly to 
a mighty volume. The sound of the final shock after the heated 
ball struck the water, came up like the boom of a distant cannon. 

The sight was wonderfully impressive. They all stood in silence 
for a minute or so, as if something solemn had occurred. '' That 
made a piece of fireworks worth putting beside that natural gas well 
we saw in Ohio," said Harry. " In that case the fire was coming 
up out of the earth, and in this it was going down into it." 

The superintendent offered to take them down into the mine. 
" Nothing in the world would tempt me to go ! " said Florence, 
shuddering as she thought of the descent of the fire-ball into the 
fearful abyss. No one appeared to be enthusiastic to go, and Mr. 
Brinkley cordially thanked the superintendant and said their time 
was too limited to undertake it. 



218 THE CRUISE OF A LAXD-YACHT. 

The great chapel next engaged their attention. It was so large 
that it would pass for a cathedral in the United States, and was the 
costliest and most beautiful of all the mining chapels in Mexico. 
The dark brown stone of its front was elaborately carved. Matching 
the clock in one of the twin towers there was a complete calendar of 
the year in the other, with a great many figures and signs. Each 
of the three great altars in the richly decorated interior, of intricately 
carved, heavily gilded wood-work, cost seventy thousand dollars apiece. 

The superintendent gave them some interesting particulars about 
minino- in Guanajuato. The Valenciana mine, in sixty years since 
its discovery in 1766, had yielded at least two hundred and sixty-six 
million dollars, as shown by the records, but as the records were lost 
for some years, it was believed that the total would amount to three 
hundred million. One of its owners alone, Antonio Obregon, had 
received over one hundred and five million dollars from the mine, 
and his wealth had bought him the title of the Count of Valenciana. 
The mine, though still yielding largely, was not paying expenses 
now, but there was no knowing when a rich vein might be struck 
ao-ain. It was a curious fact that many of the owners of mines in 
Guanajuato that were being run at a loss nevertheless found their 
property profitable, for they were owners of reduction-works also, 
and they had the ore reduced at their own works, on which they 
made handsome profits. It was said that the mines of Guanajuato 
had yielded something like a billion dollars since then- discovery. 

They returned to Silao late that afternoon, and that evening on 
the train they all hstened with keen interest to what Ignacio told 
them about many romantic and adventurous incidents in the history 
of Mexican mining ; of enormous fortunes suddenly made, of others 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 219 

as suddenly lost, of remarkable robberies of treasure-trains, and of 
the accounts of the revelation of rich mines by means of visions, and 
of the princely display of great wealth. One of the great mine- 
owners in Pachuca was so rich that when his daughter was married 
he had the road from his house to the church paved with silver bars, 
over which the wedding party walked all the way. 

The next morning they continued their journey. Just beyond 
Aguascalientes they enterd upon the branch line to San Luis Potosi 
and Tampico. They reached the former city, the capital of the im- 
j)ortant State of the same name, just after dark. They found it in 
such a blaze of illumination in honor of the opening of the railway 
to Tampico that from a distance it seemed as if a conflagration were 
raging. The station was almost in the heart of the city, and they 
went out to see the rejoicing. Merry, but orderly crowds filled the 
narrow streets. On all sides there were great festoons of Japanese 
lanterns, like strings of luminous beads of many colors. Along the 
edges of the housetops were dotted lines of tiny flame from tapers 
floating in little saucers of pottery filled with oil. On many of the 
flat roofs huge bon-fires were blazing, and Bengal flames of all colors 
were gleaming out continually on all hands, painting in fantastically 
rich hues the beautifully carved church-towers that lifted themselves 
brightly against the dark sky. Electric lights were abundantly 
sprinkled around, and in the main plaza dense throngs were listeniui^ 
to fine music from military bands, and splendid fireworks were inces- 
santly flashing. 

" HoAV perfectly gorgeous ! " cried Florence, in ecstasy. 

" I never saw any fireworks anywhere that beat these," said 
Eliot. 



220 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

" Here Pablo, your hand on it ! " shouted Harry in enthusiasm.. 
** You Mexicans just know how to iUuminate ! I never saw anything 
at home that could hold a candle to this ! " 

'^ San Luis Potosi probably has good reason to rejoice,'' said Mr. 
Brinkley, " for the opening of the line to Tampico will make her 
one of the most important commercial cities in Mexico and more 
than restore her to the position she held before the building of the^ 
Vera Cruz Railway diverted all the trade from the coast that way." 

" What does Potosi mean ? " asked Mabel. 

" Treasure," responded Ignacio. " The city was founded be- 
cause rich mines were discovered in a range near by to the eastward. 
So they called it Saint Louis of the Treasure, as you would say in 
English." 

They caught the infection of the universal rejoicing about them,, 
and on returning to the Ariadne after lingering late to listen to the 
music and see the sights, they all shared in the confidence that the- 
fine old city was at the beginning of a busy and prosperous future. 
" It really ought to be a great distributing point," said Mr. Brinkley. . 
" Here the two great railway-systems of the country, the Mexican 
Central and the Mexican National, cross each other and give facili- 
ties for traf&c in nearly all directions. By the way, if the National 
were only standard-gauge we might go home that way from here. 
The scenery is fine and Monterey is a very interesting place. We 
shall have to have the gauge widened for our benefit the next time 
we come to Mexico ! " 

At the car they found a pleasant-looking young American await- 
ing their return. " Mr. Whorf wired me to meet you here, if pos- 
sible, and to show you over our line," he said. 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 221 

" Ah, then you must be Mr. McCotter, the superintendent of the 
Tampico Division," said Mr. Brinkley. " Somehow I had been 
looking for an older man. I am delighted to know you, Mr. 
McCotter. From what Mr. Whorf told me of your trip together in 
that first train, I am sure it will be a rare piece of good fortune for 
us to have the pleasure of your company. Unfortunately all our 
beds are full, but if you will put up with a mattress on the floor, I 
think we can make you fairly comfortable." 

^' Thank you, but there is really no occasion for the trouble. I 
have brought my own car along, such as it is, and shall get along 
nicely." 

" At all events, you must join us at meal-times. This is a great 
celebration here ! " 

" It is indeed, and they keep it up for several days. They have 
a capacity for that. Fireworks, illuminations, banquets, balls, games, 
concerts, etc. It is like a week of Fourth of July ! They enjoyed 
the grand excursion to Tampico and back immensely. But it could 
not compare with ours just before, nor will it with what we shall 
have this time, for the party was too large to stop over to see the 
sights at different interesting points. But I will bid you good 
night. We pull out from here at 4 o'clock, and by daylight we 
shall be dropping down from the table-land pretty rapidly." 




CHAPTER XVII. 

DOWN AMONG TROPICAL MARVELS. 

T^HEY were aU up betimes the 
•* next morning. Behind them, 
to the westward, the long, 
slanting shadows cast by the 
early sun extended over a 
vast plain out of whose ex- 
panse grand mountain ranges 
lifted themselves into the air. 
As they stopped at a station Mr. McCotter said : " Now we shall 
soon be taking our first great drop, down into the valley of San 
Yaidro." 

" What a funny-looking car ! " exclaimed Harry, who had jumped 
to the ground, and was looking ahead along the train, which was a 
short one, consisting only of the Ariadne, Mr. McCotter's car, and a 
locomotive. 

" Yes, that is my ' Canvas-back,' as we call her," said Mr. McCot- 
ter. " No wonder you laugh. The combination of your Ariadne 
here, and that chunky, scrubby-looking little thing hitched on ahead 
of her, reminds me of Landseer's picture, ^ Dignity and Impudence.' " 
The " Canvas-back " was simply a freight-train caboose, fitted up 
comfortably for Mr. McCotter's convenience in his frequent trij^s over 
the line. The peculiar feature that gave the car its name v/as a 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 223 

canvas awning-, stretched out on a level with the top of the look-out, 
and extending well over the sides and ends, so as to give the utmost 
shade possible. 

" I see you have the same idea for the protection of your car that 
I have embodied in the double roof of the Ariadne," said Mr. 
Brinkley. 

" Yes, and the shade from that piece of canvas, with the free 
circulation of air between, makes a wonderful difference in temper- 
ature. Without it, the car would be like an oven in the hot climate 
of the coast." 

They started, and, after winding through a rough and narrow 
gorge of bare, baked-looking rock, they began to drop rapidly, but 
cautiously, in a series of sharp curves, down a heavy grade. 

" How strange those mountains look ! " said Harry, looking up 
at the heights that towered beside the narrow valley. " They are 
all covered with trees on one side and bare as a bone on the other." 

" That is on account of the moist air blowing continually inland 
from the Gulf," said Mr. McCotter. " It deposits its moisture on 
the windward sides of the slopes, and leaves nothing for the lee- 
ward." 

" That sounds good — windward and leeward ! " said Harry. " I 
might know you were from the coast." 

" Yes, if I hadn't learnt it in Boston harbor, I might have done 
so at Tampico ! " 

As they crept along the faces of cliffs and swung around abrupt 
points they caught sight of lower and lower depths of the widening 
valley, its slopes mantled with a luxuriant green. " What a contrast 
from the dry regions where we have been ! " exclaimed Mabel. 



224 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

" And this is the dry season, too," said Mr. McCotter. ^' Per- 
haps you can imagine what it must be in the rainy months ! But, 
as a matter of fact, it is never dry here, and these slopes are perpet- 
ually green. You would be likely to think, however, that the farther 
east you went the greener it grows. But the contrary is the case. 
Pretty soon, as we proceed, we shall find the country growing dryer 
and dryer. You see the land falls off, from the high table-land to 
the coast, in a series of several terraces. Each step forms a wide, 
trough-like valley running in a general northerly and southerly 
direction, the edge marked by a range of mountains. The winds 
from the Gulf, continually blowing from the eastward, blow against 
the eastern slopes of these mountains, and passing over their sum- 
mits, repeats the operation on the next higher ranges, and so on. So 
the inner slopes of the ranges and the easterly sides of the valleys are 
left dry, while the westerly portion and outer slopes are kept moist." 

They entered a wide plain where richly cultivated land stretched 
away for miles and miles, and kept on in a bee-line across the valley, 
which they perceived grew dryer as they advanced, just as they had 
been told. "It seems strange how the opposite sides of the same 
valley can have entirely different climates, one very moist and the 
other very dry," said Mr. McCotter. " This level here forms the 
first great step in the descent from the main table-land. There are 
two more broad plain-like steps, and then comes the great plain of 
the coast." 

" Before I came to Mexico," said Harry, '' I always thought that 
the table-land was all flat and even, like a table, and I was surprised 
to find it seamed everywhere with mountain ranges, and the j)lains 
always forming a slope like the roof of a shed ; lying at different 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 227 

levels between the mountains instead of all on one general level." 

" Yes, Mexico is a land of mountains from one end to the other," 
said Eliot. " The only part of the country I have ever been in 
where mountains were not in sight is Yucatan, which is a sort of 
duplicate of Florida." 

" It seems just like a rumpled sheet," said Harry. " I believe 
that if you could pull the surface out even, it would stretch the 
country out as wide as the Mississippi valley ! " 

" In this valley, off to the southward there about twenty miles," 
said Mr. McCotter, " lies the city of Rio Verde. It is a beautiful 
place and they raise quantities of fine oranges around there. They 
do something to their oranges I never heard of anywhere else ; they 
smoke them just as hams are smoked. They say it preserves them 
for a much longer time and keeps them from drying up. I hardly 
see why it should, but of course it must, or they wouldn't do it." 

Their next descent was into the beautiful cup-like valley of Las 
Canoas, its verdant, undulating meadows closed in on nearly every 
side by precipitous mountains. Wild and grotesque-looking rocks, 
richly dressed with shrubs and ferns, with a plumage of trees grow- 
ing in every possible crevice, thrust themselves sharply up through 
the ground in long, " razor-backed " ridges. The course of a clear 
stream was marked by a line of great cypresses. There were delicate 
fleecy clouds floating in the tender sky, so differennt in its blueness 
from the dome of intense brilliancy that arched over the table-land. 

" We are clearly getting down into tropical luxuriance," said 
Mabel. " See those beautiful great velvety-leaved plants growing 
all along the margin of the water. It seems like a conservatory run 
wild." 



228 THE CRUISE OF A LAXD-YACHT. 

" Only wait for a few miles, before you think of tropical," said 
Mr. McCotter. Do you see that ravine down there deepen and 
broaden ? That is the beginning of the great Tamasopo canon." 

Accompanying this ravine in its course, the train entered a nar- 
row pass in the mountains and was soon winding along the precip- 
itous southerly side of the gorge, passing through a succession of 
tunnels in sharp curves, the depths below growing greater and 
greater, although the railway line itself was on a rapidly descending 
grade. The steep slopes were thickly mantled with vegetation that 
softened the wild ruggedness of the outlines. " What a mottled 
and variegated mass of coloring! It ranges from Hght golden- 
green tints down to the darkest shades," said Mabel. 

" It looks as if the mountains were draped in rich Oriental 
shawls of a greenish tone," said Florence. 

Ahead of them they saw a gigantic natural wall with a jagged 
top cutting straight across the canon, down one declivity and up the 
opposite. Passing through this " MuraUa del Diablo," or " Devil's 
Wall," as it was called, by a short tunnel cut through it like a door- 
way, they saw the narrow canon widening out and revealing a vast 
panoramic landscape beyond. They passed out of the canon on 
rounding a point, and turning abruptly to the right, their train 
crawled along a narrow shelf cut in the face of a tremendous cliff 
bounding the great valley before them. It was a sheer descent of 
as much as twelve hundred feet down to a dense tropical forest, the 
most luxuriant they had ever seen. The cliff rose above them to a 
heio^ht equal to, if not greater than, the distance down to where its 
rocky feet were slippered in the warm verdure. On the slopes of 
the mountains were little handkerchief -like patches where the Indians 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 229 

had sug-ar-cane growing, the light, yellowish-green strangely marking 
them from .afar oif as they lay spread out amidst the dark foliage. 
With the exception of these, and a large cultivated area seen in the 
distance, the whole expanse seemed to be a wilderness. Far ahead, 
along the steep slopes of the mountains, they could trace the course 
of the track they were to traverse, as it showed here and there out 
of the thick mantle of trees, winding down and down in serpentine 
loops, and finally appearing directly below them, forming a straight 
avenue through the forest. Thence it again meandered away into 
the remote distance, where, as it disappeared around a far mountain 
shoulder, it could be seen that there were lower levels in the valley 
yet to be reached. 

"Do you see that notch way over there in the mountains?" 
asked Mr. McCotter. " That is the pass through which we have to 
go to the next wide terrace in our descent, and we shall be there 
this evening." 

They all stood out on the rear platform and watched the chang- 
ing scenes that followed each other in a bewildering* array of 
grandeur and beauty. 

About half an hour after leaving the Tamasopo carion they found 
themselves among the tall trees of the primeval forest that crowded 
themselves in thick ranks about its mouth. They learned with sur- 
prise that it was cultivated ground — a coffee plantation, or cafetal. 
For, although primeval, the rank undergrowth had been cleared 
away and coffee trees planted. They could see the glossy, ever- 
green leaves of the coffee, and its flowers of pure white, gleaming 
star-like out of the verdant shadow. 

As they sped on, they passed many a stream of rushing clear 



230 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

water. This valley likewise grew dryer as they passed to the east- 
ward. The forest giants gave way to tall and closely growing fan- 
palms and thickets of bamboo in graceful plumage. At intervals 
they passed groups of men at work on the track — Indians mostly, 
and many of them wearing hardly any clothing, which none of them 
really needed, so far as comfort went, in that climate. All 
laughed heartily at one man whom they saw trudging along the track. 
When they first saw him he was back to, and he seemed to be wear- 
ing nothing but a jjair of cotton drawers, but when they passed him 
they saw that he evidently wanted to look more dressed up to people 
whom he met, for a large red bandanna handkerchief covered his 
waist also, so that he seemed to be wearing a shirt " when viewed 
on his north side," as Eliot said, — an expression that struck Ignacio 
and Pablo as very droll. 

Late in the afternoon they reached the Abra de Caballeros, their 
next pass through the mountains. The landscape equalled in its 
grandeur anything they had seen. The opening through the range 
was nearly straight, with almost perpendicular sides, and the track 
was laid through the bottom of the pass, following the course of the 
stream. Therefore they had the full advantage of the entire height 
in their view of the scene. On either side of the narrow entrance 
there stood, like giant sentinels, two great peaks with smooth-look- 
ing, precipitous faces. 

" We will keep on down through the pass for the sake of the 
view," said Mr. McCotter. " It is particularly fine at this late 
hour." 

It was but a short distance through, and in the soft light of the 
waning day another glorious panorama was suddenly spread before 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 231 

them. The vast plain seemed to be ahnost limitless. Before them, 
across the valley in the faint distance to the eastward, there ran the 
last range to be passed before reaching the coast plain. The mouth 
of the Abra de Caballeros was still over a hundred miles from the 
Gulf. The plain was hundreds of feet directly down from the track, 
which ran along the steep face of the mountains and gradually 
meandered down to the lower levels. 

Behind them, looking up the pass, there was an enchanting pict- 
ure. On the opposite side a tremendous cliff rose in a sheer preci- 
pice to its rounded summit for a height of something like three 
thousand feet. The sternness of its stony face was softened by the 
rich masses of vegetation that clothed it. Directly at its feet the 
river that flowed through the pass came tumbling down in a series 
of great cascades for a total fall of about three hundred feet. The 
rocks beneath the water were all clothed with some peculiar aquatic 
vegetation that gave to the falls a wonderfully pure and luminous 
emerald color. 

The train backed up to a place some distance above the 
falls where there was a good opportunity for a bath in the gentle 
rapids. The young men went down to the river through the thick 
jungle along a convenient path that had been cut a few days before 
for the previous party. They were soon merrily sporting in the 
dehcious water which came sweeping down over their shoulders lilve 
a softly flowing mantle, as they lay reclining in great natural bath- 
tubs hollowed out among the rocks. These had been excavated by 
the force of the current during the mighty floods of a thousand sea- 
sons as it hurled great boulders about in the bed of the stream. 

While they were dressing they heard some unearthly yells from 



232 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



somewhere up the stream. They all started ui affright, not knowing 
what might have happened. The cries came nearer, and they recog- 
nized a famihar voice. In a moment Sam, the cook, came plunging 
through the undergrowth into their midst and, finding himself sud- 
denly surrounded by a group of naked white human shapes, and not 
recognizing them at first in the dim light of the late dusk, he gave a 
shriek of terror more agonizing than ever. Even through the gloom 
they could see that his face was as pale as a person of his complexion 

well could be. It recalled a mass 
of partially consumed charcoal, 
powdered with its own ashes. 
" What in the world is the 
matter, Sam ? " demanded Eliot. 
" Marse Eliot, Marse 
Eliot ! " cried the cook, recover- 
ing himself a bit, but trembling 
aU over, so that his voice also 
shook, " Then it's only you and 
the other young gen'lemen ! 
I s'posed f suah you was all 
some kind o' wild cannybawls 
rov'n round heah ! " 

" Well, you see we are not 
cannibals after all ! Though 
there's no knowing what might 
happen, we are so hungry for 
one of your good suppers, after our bath. Now tell us what you 
were raising all that hullabaloo about just now. The echoes have 
hardly died away yet ! " 




THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 233 

" Why, I went down t' the crick thah to see f ' I couldn't shoot 
some ducks whah th' trees grow up out the water sort o' swampy 
like. I stood lookin' round and right to my feet there was a log 
lyin' in the water, as I s'posed. But, as I give it a kick to see if 
'twasn't too rotten to stand on, all 't once th' nigh end opened up 
on me like a pair o' tailor's shears ! Foh de Lawd 'twas a great big 
alligator, and I could see way down into an awful deep black throat 
like a bottomless pit big enough to swaller th' ingine to our train ! 
You better b'lieve, Marse Eliot, I didn't lose no time gitt'n 'way 
from thah ! " 

" Alligators here close by ! " cried Harry, turning a bit pale him- 
self. " Why, it must have been awfully dangerous for us to go in 
swimming here ! We might have got bitten ourselves ! " 

" no, there's not the least danger in a place lilie this ! " said 
Mr. McCotter. " The alligators are only found in sluggish water ; 
in the pools and other still places. They never come down among 
the rocks and rapids." 

The train backed up to the station at the entrance of the pass, 
and here they lay over till morning. It was warm enough that 
night, but the electric fan prevented the atmosphere from becomino- 
oppressive, and they slept comfortably. 

It was long before daylight when the train started, and when 
they were up they found themselves at the entrance of the passao-e 
through the last range, before reaching the coast plain. The jDass 
was called El Boca del Abra. 

" Now we shall take a look at a cave," said Mr. McCotter, after 
they had eaten breakfast. He guided them up the slope of the pass 
beside the track and a short climb over the rocks brouo-ht them to 



234 THE CKUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

the entrance of the cave. Here they found themselves hi a large 
rotuncla-like space, with walls of pure, grayish tints, stained here 
and there with deHcate green and other subtle shades of color 
by the mmeral-charged water that had seeped through and also 
formed the graceful fringes of stalactites depending from the roof. 

It was quite different from Harry's conception of a cave, for they 
needed no torches with which to see their way ; instead of having to 
peer through deep gloom and half imagine the shapes of things 
about them, the place was filled with a pleasant mellow light that 
poured down from above, through an almost circular opening in the 
dome-like ceiling. Looking up, they caught bright glimpses of the 
blue morning sky through a canopy of foliage sprinkled with sun- 
shine. The roots of trees grew downward through this opening 
and exhibited various stages of growth, from fringes of delicate fila- 
ments suspended in the air to strong, slender columns that formed 
an irregular ring in the centre of the rotunda, apparently supporting 
the roof, in rivalry with the stalactites. Directly beneath the open- 
ing there grew a mass of shrubs and plants in the light which it 
afforded, forming a sort of natural flower-bed. 

They passed on through a series of chambers, some still loftier 
and others low and spreading, but all having the skylight feature. 
Some of the rooms were at higher levels than the others, and from 
one they could look down through an opening with a sort of balcony 
into another in which they had already been. 

" This is the most delightful sort of cave I ever heard of," said 
Florence. 

" All the caves in this part of the country are like this ; they all 
have skylights," said Mr. McCotter. " At one place further down 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 235 

the line you can see in the distance an opening in the side of a 
mountain, like a great arched portal. It is two or three hundred 
feet high, and is called La Yentana, or the Window. The cave is 
something over seven hundred feet high from floor to ceiling, and 
forms a magnificent great hall, well lighted from above. It was 
once the abode of a band of robbers, and in the walls are still the 
ii'on rings where they used to tie their horses. It is really a hollow 
mountain, a sort of great stone shell. 

" Here are the tracks of some animal," said Mr. Brinkley, point- 
ing to some footprints on the floor. 

" Fresh tracks, too," said Eliot. " It must have been quite a 
sizeable beast." 

" Why, they are tiger-tracks ! " exclaimed Mr. McCotter. 

" Tiger-tracks ! " shrieked the ladies, in unison. 

" Why, perhaps he's still here ! " cried Harry. 

" I think not ; he's probably gone out to look for his breakfast! " 
said Mr. McCotter. 

" Well, I for one do not intend to give him a chance to find it 
here," said Mr. Brinkley. 

The ladies had not waited for further explanations, but had 
rushed off in the direction whence they had come. The others 
followed, by no means slowly. " Suppose we really had seen the 
eyes of the tiger himself glaring at us out of some of those dark 
recesses in there, like two balls of fire ! How we would have come 
piling out of that cave then ! " said Harry, when they were outside, 
and breathing freely again. 

" It makes me shudder to think of it ! " cried Florence. 

" I shall always insist that we have had a narrow escape," said 



236 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

Mabel. " The fresh tracks bring the real tiger near enough, and I 
shall make the most of it when I tell about it at home. It is too 
good an opportunity not to be improved. Now after we once get 
started again on the train, I should really enjoy a sight of His Tiger- 
ship peering over the rocks at us." 

"But the tiger is an Asiatic animal," said Harry. "How is it 
there are tigers here ? " 

" It is really the jaguar," said Eliot. " But it is also known as 
the American tiger, and the Mexicans call it the tigre. It looks 
something like a tiger, and is beautifully spotted, but is much 
smaller." 

Just as they had reached the train they were startled by the 
sharp report of a gun in the direction whence they had come, fol- 
lowed by another. What could have happened ? 

" I saw some of the men going out with guns just before we 
started to go to the cave," said Harry. 

" The second one was a rifle-shot," said Mr. McCotter, " but then 
they might have fired at a parrot with a rifle by mistake. Jack 
Bliven, the fireman, has a shot-gun and rifle combined." 

Very shortly there appeared up on the slope above them two 
men bearing the limp carcass of a tawny animal. 

" They've shot the tiger sure enough ! " exclaimed Eliot. " What 
luck ! " 

It was Bliven and Antonio, the latter a Mexican brakeman. 

There was great excitement all around when the tiger was laid 
on the ground before them, and the two men were highly elated. 

" Mighty lucky my shot-gun was a rifle too ! " said Bliven. 
" Antonio and I went out after birds, and we came suddenly upon 



THE CRUISE OP A LAND-YACHT. 237 

the tiger. Antonio saw liim first and gave a yell ; he was crouched 
among the rocks not over ten paces away, all ready to spring at 
something. I raised my gun and fired a charge of bird-shot at him, 
not thinking ; it peppered him and maddened him so that he gave a 
leap right at me, when I remembered the rifle and fired instantly. 
The beast dropped dead right at my feet." 

" How splendid ! " exclaimed Mabel. " Now the whole advent- 
ure is complete ! " 

" What an elegant creature ! " said Florence, looking sympatheti- 
cally at the supple, graceful form, with its beautiful, delicately 
marked skin, and the yellow eyes, glassy in death and no longer 
iierce. " The poor thing ! " 

" Suppose the 'poor thing' had jumped at you in the cave," said 
Eliot with a laugh. " I am afraid that it is a waste of sympathy to 
•expend it upon tigers." 

The train started and shortly passed through a tunnel and out 
of the last mountain gorge. The great plain of the coast stretched 
ocean-like before them, covered with a forest which, with its varied 
tints of foKage, looked much like a New England woodland in spring- 
time. As was the case with their previous descents to lower levels 
they went along the precipitous face of the mountain, gradually ap- 
proaching the even ground of the plain. 

" We are getting near the great Choy cave," said Mr. McCotter, 
while they were still descending, and at his suggestion they all went 
out onto the " quarter-deck." " Now look down at the track. This 
bridge is built directly across the ' skylight ' of the cave." 

As they were passing over a substantial iron bridge, the train 
moving slowly, suddenly there yawned beneath them a deep, pit-like 



238 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

cliasm. Far below, in the shady abyss, they saw the glinting of a 
stream rushing rapidly over the rocks. " It is two hundred and five 
feet from the bridge down to the water there," said Mr. McCotter. 
" Just back of those rapids the water in the cave is deep and still, and 
reaches back a long ways, covering the floor to a great depth — over 
fifty feet, at least, so that Bunker Hill monument, which is two 
hundred feet high, could be stood upright in the chamber with 
plenty of room to spare between its top and the roof." 

The train stopped and they walked back to the bridge, through 
the open-work of which they peered down into the dizzy depths. 
From the side of the track the mountain side was an almost perpen- 
dicular wall of rock down to the plain, nearly two hundred and fifty 
feet below. The Choy river came tumbling out of the cave in a 
lively cascade and then meandered briskly off into the plain. The 
young men lost no time in descending into the cave to enjoy the 
morning bath they had been promised there. The ladies wandered 
up and down the track, enjoying the grand prospect and gathering the 
wild-flowers which they found growing in great profusion. Among 
them were two beautiful kinds of the passion-flower, one small and 
delicate, with stems and sepals moss-covered, like the moss rose. 

Mr. Brinkley accompanied the young men down the steep path 
over the rocks in the face of the precipice to an upper entrance to 
the cave, something more than half way to the bottom. The 
chamber where they entered was partly filled with loose rock that 
had been blasted away in the construction of the railroad, and Mr. 
Brinkley decided not to venture his considerable weight down the 
uncomfortable slope, but content hmiself with a survey from above, 
where there was a good view over the interior. 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 239 

The cave was composed o£ two adjacent chambers, narrow and 
lofty, something in the style of a cathedral with a double nave. The 
farther chamber ran back into the mountain for some distance, and 
the two were connected by a broad, high arch, resembling that of a 
theatre proscenium, though grandly irregular in outline. 

The young fellows were soon in the water, and the vaulted 
ceilings resounded with their merry cries as they sported about. 
The water was crystal clear and of a rare azure hue, through which 
the gleam of their white bodies had a strangely pallid and unearthly 
effect, in contrast with the dark translucence about them. 

" It seems as if this were some ancient abandoned cathedral con- 
verted into a grand swimming-bath," said Eliot. " But isn't it de- 
hcious ! The temperature of the water is perfect ; we could stay in 
here all day without fear of a chill ! " 

" I, for one," shouted Harry, " am ready to turn merman on the 
spot and take up my permanent residence in Choy cave ! " 

" How remarkably buoyant this water is ! " remarked Ignacio. 

" It strikes me as being even more so than salt water. I can't 
account for fresh water having such a property," said Eliot. 

" Some of the boys," said Mr. McCotter, " think that it is prob- 
ably due to the force of the water as it somehow comes welling up 
from below, and so having a greater sustaining power." 

" Isn't it because it perhaps carries in solution a large amount of 
lime, or other minerals, just as salt gives the water of the ocean its 
density ? " asked Harry. 

" I shouldn't wonder if you had struck the true reason, Harry," 
said Eliot. " As all these mountains are limestones, this water must 
certainly carry a large amount of lime in solution, and it would 
naturally have such an effect." 



240 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

" Do you know there is a second story to this cave, in back 
there ? " said Mr. McCotter. " One time a number of the raikoad 
men were up here and while Mr. Whorf was looking around up the 
mountain, the rest of them went in swimming here in the Choy. 
Mr. Whorf and his party found the entrance of another cave up 
there, and went in to explore it. They saw that at one end it fell 
away into a dark pit of unknown depth, and they began to throw 
rocks down into it to see how far it went. The rocks went rolling 
and crashing down, when suddenly their blood was almost frozen in 
their veins and their hair fairly stood on end at the sound of a suc- 
cession of piercing yells of the most frantic and panic-stricken de- 
scription. A Mexican servant with them dropped on his knees with 
terror, and for a moment they were prepared to believe in the exist- 
ence of the gnomes that are said to inhabit the crevices of the earth. 
They had sent their shower of rocks down among the swimmers 
here, who were naturally terribly frightened, but fortunately no one 
was hurt." 

Out of the water, in the back part of the cave, there rose a pin- 
nacle to a height of something like twenty feet, looking, in that 
position, like a pulpit. Its face was nearly perpendicular, and natu- 
ral steps in the rear made its top accessible. 

" What a place for a dive ! " cried Eliot, and the swimmers made 
for it. 

With one of the young men poised like a statue on the peak, 
ready for a 'plunge, some clambering up the sides or grouped on its 
sloping flanks, and others in the water and clinging to its base, the 
scene was a subject for a sculptor. It seemed like the realization of 
some imagined scene from classic mythology. 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 241 

The time for them to leave seemed to come all too soon, although 
they had been for over an hour in the water. The prolonged whistle 
of the locomotive, sounding strangely down from above, warned 
them that the train was ready to start, and brought them back into 
the nineteei?th century from the days of ancient Greece, in which 
for the moment they were living. 



CHAPTER XVm. 



A VISIT TO ANCIENT RUINS. 



AT TAMPICO. 




H 



OW about that ancient ruined city that 



Mr. Brinkley at dinner time, as they were 
on their way across the plains, now open 
and ahnost prairie-like, with island-like 
clumps of trees here and there. There 
was no dust, the windows were all open,, 
and though the heat was like that of July, 
the motion of the train made a comforta- 
ble breeze. 

" The Aztec city at Kilometer twenty-one ? We will stop and 
see it if you like," said Mr. McCotter. 

" By all means let us do it," said Mr. Brinkley. " We must not 
miss an opportunity like that. It isn't every railway that runs past 
a ruined city of untold antiquity." 

The train came to a stop in a thickly wooded region and they 
all got out. Mr. McCotter led the way to a path that ran into the 
forest, and they followed it along gradually rising ground. " The 
men cut out the underbrush alonof here with their machetes for Mr. 
Whorf 's party the other day, so we shall have a clear passage. Other- 
wise we should be hkely to get completely covered with pinolillas," 
said Mr. McCotter. 

" Pinolillas ? " asked Harry. 

242 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



243 



" Little ticks about the size of a pin's head. There are millions 
of them on the bushes in this country. They transfer themselves to 
you and cling to your skin and bite. They are not dangerous, but 
fearfully annoying. We shall probably see as much of them as we 
care to." 

" Well, pinolillas or no pinolillas, I am going to see that city," 
said Florence. And that was the unanimous sentiment. 

The woodland, casually regarded, had little to distinguish it from 
a New England forest of deciduous trees. Harry said it reminded 
him of the time when he went with Mr. Hunt to see the ancient 
wolf-pits in the Lynn woods. There was one marked feature, how- 
ever, that told them they were not in New England, and that was 
the low plant, profusely covering the ground with its clusters of stifp 
dagger-shaped leaves like the pine-apple. The outer leaves of each 
plant were green, and the inner ones a vivid vermillion, like the 
most brilliant autumnal foliage. The plants bore their fruit on a 
spike-like stalk, in the shape of lemon-colored balls, about the size of 
a plum. Harry asked a Mexican who had been sent to accompany 
them from the railroad section-house in the neighborhood what they 
were, and was told that they were called " guarapes ; " they were 
good to eat, only he must be careful not to eat anything but the 
pulp, or his mouth would be filled with prickles. Harry tasted one 
and found it delicious, so he and Pablo cut a stalk and had a feast 
of the sweet, juicy, rich-flavored pulp. But, after all, their tongues 
began to feel as if they had been eating the outside part of a pine- 
apple, and that evening at supper, when they went to drink their 
cofiPee, in the place of taste they felt the sensation of drinking 
millions of minute needles in liquid form ! 



244 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

They came upon the first vestige of the ruins at a point where 
the path began to ascend a considerable slope. The lines of a walled 
trench, like the ditch of a fort, were very plainly to be traced, and 
there lay prostrate on the ground a huge stone block, nicely hewn, 
and having a rude semblance to a human face. Farther up the hill 
they came to numerous small pyramids, standing in irregular lines 
that went on into the forest indefinitely. These pyramids were 
truncated ; that is, they were not continued to an apex, but about 
twelve or fifteen feet from the ground their steep slopes terminated 
in a level space. They were faced with well-hewn slabs of stone, form- 
ing a shell that enclosed an interior of earth, ashes, and broken pottery, 
as was shown in the case of one that had been partially excavated. 
The pyramids were well overgrown with shrubbery and trees. The 
young folks set about industriously grubbing in the excavated place, 
and were rewarded by finding numerous fragments of decorated 
pottery and some little figurines of terra cotta. At one place there 
was a large square platform of stone, three or four feet high, and it 
was conjectured that this was the site of a temple, while the pyramids 
were the sites of the ordinary dwellings of the people, built of reeds 
or wood. " This ridge is covered with these structures for several 
miles," said Mr. McCotter. " It appears to have been a large city 
in the ancient days. There is considerable carved stone among the 
ruins. At a corner of this stone platform there was a handsomely 
carved head, but it was carried off by one of our parties." 

" How instructive it would be if Gushing and Bandelier could 
only be with us now ! " said Mr. Brinkley. " Two such men to- 
gether could tell us a great deal about the past of this place. I 
wonder Avhat kind of people they were ! " 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 245 

" Of course it is called an ^ Aztec city ' only to indicate that it i& 
ancient," said Eliot. " The Aztecs lived on the table-land, you 
know, and the people here on the coast were probably quite a differ- 
ent race. Very likely these people here were more like the Mayas of 
Yucatan. Today the great bulk of the population of Mexico live& 
on the table-land, and the coast regions are sparsely populated. It 
is generally supposed that, for the development of energetic and in- 
dustrious qualities, men must live in a more temperate climate ; that 
here on the coast they are inevitably listless and indolent. That 
certainly seems to be the case to-day, but in former times there was- 
evidently a large population in the hot countries of the coast. 
Probably it was a race naturally fitted to work under such conditions, 
for the building of these extensive cities shows that they must have 
been industrious, and the magnificent architecture still remaining^ 
from the ancient civilization of the Mayas proves that that race, 
though living in the hot country, must have been much more ad- 
vanced than the Aztecs of the temperate table-land." 

" We ought to have a name for this city. Suppose we call it 
Mayaville ! " suggested Mabel, with a laugh. 

" horrors ! " cried Florence. " We miglit as well make it 
Jacksonville, or Whorftown, in honor of our friends, and done with 
it!" 

" We must have a good name, and by the time we get back to 
Boston perhaps we can think up something nice-sounding and appro- 
priate," said Mrs. Brinkley. 

On their return to the train, every one retired to make a careful 
search for pinolillas, of whose presence unmistakable indications were 
felt. It was well along in the afternoon when they came in sight of 



246 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

a great river. Shortly after they stopped at the station of Tamos, 
near the junction of another great stream, the Tamesi, with the 
former, which was the Panuco, the river near the mouth of which lies 
the city of Tampico. Both of these rivers are navigated by steam- 
boats far up into the interior, for a distance of something over a 
hundred miles. 

" We have got so used to regarding the dry interior as typical of 
this country that it seems strange to see so much water as this any- 
where in Mexico," said Mr. Brinkley. 

" There is no dearth of water in this part of the country, as you 
may see when I tell you that our ' dry season ' is still at its height," 
said Mr. McCotter. 

" I only wish we had time to make a steamboat trip up the 
Panuco," said Mr. Brinkley. " Mr. Whorf tells me the scenery is 
wonderfully grand. Some time I mean to come down and devote 
several weeks to this part of Mexico, and see that glorious waterfall, 
the Salto de Rascon, and the. grand valleys where the Panuco winds 
down through the mountains, and some of the other things which it 
is now so tantalizing to hear about." 

" And I want to- go across country from here up through the 
Huasteca to the City of Mexico, a route which is said to pass 
through absolutely the very finest scenery in the republic," said Eliot. 

" Me too ! " said Harry. 

'•' Ah, the thirst for Mexico is one of the most inveterate of appe- 
tites," said Mr. Brinkley, laughing. " Once acquired it is impossible 
to break it off ! " 

" Tamos ! " said Eliot. " This is the place where that letter was 
sent that Mr. Whorf told me about. You know the railway-shops 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



247 



are here at present, and one day a letter on some official business was 
written at the headquarters in Tampico to be taken up here by the 
train. By some mistake it got into the regular mail and went abroad 
— without any stamp, at that. In the course of I don't know how 
many months — considerably over a year, I believe, — the letter 
came back, having been all round the world, making stops in dozens 
of countries in about every conti- 
nent. It was directed simply to 

* So-and-So, Tames,' and it turned 
up all covered with writing : ' Try 
China,' ' Try India,' ' Try Egypt,' 
'■ Try Hungary,' ' Try Australia,' 
etc., until finally there appeared 

* Try Mexico ! ' and the letter came 
to hand at its intended destination, 
with five cents due to meet the 
expense of its adventurous tour." 

" That shows the efficiency of 
the world's postal service today," 

said Mr. Brinkley, " and how slight is the risk of the loss of a letter. 
And it shows the practical value of a governmental service. If the 
carrying of mails had been entrusted to a private corporation, what 
likelihood would there have been of that letter ever reaching its 
destination ? " 

The train rumbled across the long iron draw-bridge that crossed 
the Tamesi, and soon drew up at the station in Tampico, close to the 
water. Harry's eyes sparkled at sight of the sea-going craft 
anchored in the broad stream and moored to the banks. Beside 




=::==^ Dug-out 



248 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

the schooners and brigs there were several steamboats, a large fleet 
of lighters, and a multitude of canoes — long and narrow, and many- 
were hollowed out of the single trunks of enormous trees. The pict- 
uresque city rose up on sloping ground from the river side — a sort 
of island in the dead level of prairie-like country through which the 
river coursed between the flats. 

" Tampico is evidently quite unlike any other city in Mexico," 
said Eliot, as they looked towards the town. " Its architecture 
seems like a mixture of Havana, New Orleans, Quebec and Mexico 
— with just a dash of Kansas City thrown in, in the shape of those 
wooden shanties." 

As there was time for a stroll before sunset, they all went out to 
take a look at the place. " You might know the sea was near," said 
Harry, sniffing the moist wind blowing in from, the Gulf with a soft,, 
velvety touch and a salty flavor. 

" It's warm enough," said Florence, " but how refreshing. By 
shutting my eyes I could fancy myself at Newport." 

" How gorgeous ! Why, the town is a regular bouquet ! " 
exclaimed Mabel, looking at the hues of blue, and pale green, 
and rose-pink, and lake, etc., that covered the walls of the 
buildings." 

" They've just been j)ainting it up in honor of the railway cele- 
bration, and they've let themselves loose in color. White paint on 
the walls is forbidden here by law, on account of the glare it makes 
in the heat," said Mr. McCotter. 

" Then they'll be confiscating the Ariadne for her transgression, 
I fear ! " cried Mr. Brinkley, in mock alarm. 

'' Mira los cuervos ! Look at the ravens 1 " exclaimed Pablo.. 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 249 

The pavements were dotted with ravens and blackbirds, hopping 
about and chattering in a lively manner. 

" They are our scavengers," said Mr. McCotter. " They are 
protected by law and nobody harms them." 

" They seem to have them in place of the zopelotes, or buzzards. 
Curious there are no buzzards here, and Vera Cruz is full of them," 
said Eliot. 

" the dear little creature ! " cried Florence. They were at the 
waterside near the great market-house, and a number of dugouts 
were lying in the canal-like inlet there. In the stern of one of them 
a pretty little Indian boy was lying asleep, with one of his bare legs 
dangling over the side and his foot in the water. While they were 
admiring the charming picture he made, their laughing comments 
aroused him ; he raised his head and looked at them a moment and 
then lay carelessly back and dropped to sleep again. 

" Wouldn't he jump, though, if a big fish should bite his toe ! " 
remarked Harry. 

Just beyond the market a street from above descended to the 
water-side by a broad stairway of stone. Strolling about the town 
they came to the church on the central plaza. It was a plain and 
insignificant structure, in marked contrast with the elaborate churches 
they had found everywhere else. From the tower they had a sweep- 
ing view over the country, spreading away wide, verdant and level 
into the misty distance. The two great rivers were looped in broad 

silvery bands over the open savan- 
nahs. In nearly every direction 
there were large lagoons occupying 
almost as much of the surface as 
the solid ground. Here and there 




250 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

groups of feathery cocoanut-palms stood on the banks of the 
stream. Down the river, to the eastward, was a range of high 
bluffs, partially cutting off the view of the Gulf that lay, serenely 
blue, reaching off to its straight horizon line. 

" The whole country seems fairly sloppy with water ! " remarked 
Eliot. 

Walking through the business part of the town they were 
amused at the audacity and fearlessness of the ravens, as they 
gathered on the pavement, noisily chatteringo On one corner, on 
the sidewalk, a dog lay indolently stretched out asleep, after the 
canine fashion universal in Mexico. One of the ravens from a group 
close by hopped onto the dog's flank and stood there for some time. 
The dog did not stir ! 

" Ah, here is Captain Kendrick," said Mr. McCotter, and he pre- 
sented the commodore of the company's fleet of lighters to the party. 
The captain was a typical " old salt " from Cape Cod, whose sands 
have produced one of the finest races of sailors in the world. 

It was arranged with the Captain that they should go down the 
river and out to the bar the next day on the tug, and on their re- 
turn they were to enjoy a fish dinner on board, with a crab soup 
which, it was warranted, would make even a Dehnonico turn green 
with envy. 

The next morning they all started down the river on the Orinda, 
the great tug — all except Eliot, who declined to improve the op- 
portunity to test the contractile force of his stomach on the tum- 
bling seas of the bar. Harry was soon engaged in intimate converse 
with Captain Kendrick, exchanging reminiscences of the New Eng- 
land shore and telling the Captain all the maritime gossip of the 



THE CKUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 253 

year at home, in return for a good stock of information about the 
Mexican coast. 

The Panuco pours its great volume out into the Gulf so steadily 
that the slight rise and fall which the tide has in that part of the 
world affects but slightly the force of its flow. But where the river 
current dissipates itself in the salt sea the waves of the latter heap 
up the loose sands in a great bar across its mouth. The bar is 
passable only by a shallow, tortuous, and constantly shifting channel. 
But for this obstacle to navigation, Tampico, from the earliest history 
of the Spanish occupation, of Mexico, would have been one of the 
greatest ports of the New World, for the river itself, with its great 
depth, affords from far above the city down to its mouth ample and 
safe shelter for hundreds of the largest ocean steamships, could they 
only cross the bar. Taking example of the grand work of Captain 
Eads at the mouth of the Mississippi, the railway company was now 
engaged in securing this invaluable advantage for Tampico by the 
construction of jetties out over the bar into deep water, reaching 
from the shore on either side of the river mouth for over a mile off 
into the Gulf. The steady wash of the Panuco, whose volume is 
greater than that of the Mississippi at the South Pass, would scour 
out the channel and make a permanent passage across the bar, deep 
enough for the largest vessels. 

The trip down the river was a pleasant one of something like six 
miles. The wind was blowing steadily from the eastward and when 
they reached the Gulf they could see the shallow greenish stretch 
of the bar before them covered with tossing white caps, as if the 
mouth of the stream were filled with a set of savage, glittering teeth. 
The tug made for this directly. It looked as if there were no pas- 



254 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

sage across the threatening barricade of breakers, but Harry could 
see, from in front of the pilot-house, where he stood, that there were 
patches of smooth water amidst the foam-caps here and there, ap- 
parently detached, but in reality connected and forming a serpentine 
course over the bar. They were almost in the midst of the wicked- 
looking breakers, which were tossing angrily on both the port and 
starboard bows, when Captain Kendrick remarked that it seemed 
hardly prudent to venture across in that wind. So the boat's course 
was changed, and in a moment more she was again in smooth water 
and headed shoreward, much to the relief of one of the young ladies, 
as well as of Ignacio. For, in the minute or so while they were 
tossing on the inner edge of the bar, both Ignacio and Mabel were 
visibly affected by the motion, and the sympathetic glances of mutual 
commiseration that they cast towards each other caused not a little 
amusement to Pablo and Harry, for the younger Mexican showed no 
signs of sea-sickness. 

" You are getting broken in for Massachusetts Bay next August 
in first-class shape, Pablito," said Harry. 

" I think the ancient Visigoth who transmitted his physique to 
Pablo must have been a viking ! " said Mr. Brinkley, patting the 
lad's shoulder. 

They came to anchor off the northern bank of the river mouth, 
where the headquarters of the harbor-improvement works had been 
established. The work on the jetties had only just begun. A row- 
boat put off and in it they all went ashore. They were surprised to 
be met on the beach by Eliot, who had driven down from the town 
with Colonel Wrotnosky, the chief engineer of the harbor works, in 
the details of which, Eliot, as an engineer, was deeply interested. 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 255 

The boys strolled off along the beach, which was bordered by 
sand-dunes and seemed little different from a beach of the Northern 
coast in its general appearance, save for the luxuriant and brilliant 
beach peas, primrose and convolvulus mantling- the sand at the base 
of the dunes. Roaming off for some distance to the northward of 
the tall, skeleton-hke iron lighthouse tower, Harry took advantao-e 
of the opportunity to initiate Pablo into the sport of surf-bathing, 
which they found delightful in the warm salt water, although they 
did not venture out to any depth, as Captain Kendrick had warned 
them of the big and hungry sharks that lay in wait off the shore. 

The huge trunk of a great dead cedar with fantastically gnarled 
branches, that had been tossed up by the waves, was lying on the 
shore, close to the water. Three young Mexican peones were sitting 
on the trunk and watching the boys sporting in the water. As they 
scampered past the tree, splashing in the edge of the surf, Pablo 
started back in affright. " Mira ! Mira ! la culebra ! " (Look ! look ! 
the snake !) he shouted. 

There, stretched out on one of the branches below, near the sand, 
in a snug recess, and hardly distinguishable from the tree in color, 
lay the thick folds of a snake, evinently enjoying a siesta. To 
Harry's startled gaze it seemed as big as a boa constrictor. The 
three peones leaped from their perch in quick alarm at Pablo's words. 
One of them, siezing a long stick of driftwood that lay on the beach 
close by, approached cautiously and gave a poke at his snakeship, 
who, with an angry hiss and an agile wriggle, disappeared beneath 
the trunk. He was soon discovered, gliding up out of the water 
into which he had escaped, making for the tree again, beneath which 
he once more vanished. They had all armed themselves with stakes 



256 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

by this time, and by dint of much thrusting about, they finally suc- 
ceeded in dislodging and slaying the snake, which after all proved 
to be only about four feet long, though very thick. " Pooh ! I have 
seen black-snakes bigger than that at home ! " said Harry, con- 
temptuously. But, nevertheless, he took the reptile by the tail when 
they returned to the boat, and triumphantly exhibited it as evidence 
of their adventure. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE BRIDGE OF GOD. 

THAT evening they bade good-bye to Tampico. Morning found 
them ao-ain ascending- the wonderful slopes of the valley where 
the great opening of the Tamosopo canon showed magnificently be- 
fore them in the sublime mountain wall. " There is one more sight 
for you that has been saved for the return, just to show that you 
have by no means exhausted the wonders of this country," said Mr. 
McCotter, who was accompanying them as far as the end of his 
division, at Cardenas. 

" And that is the Puente de Dios, I suppose," said Eliot. 
" The Bridge of God — it ought to be something grand to be 
worthy of that name," said Mr. Brinkley. 

" Any chance for a swim there ? " asked Harry. 
" Just wait and see ! " said Mr. McCotter, significantly. 
a ^ell — we can't expect anything else to come up to the Choy 
cave in that line ! " remarked Harry, doubtingly. 

The train came to a halt in the grand avenue made by the rail- 
way through the luxuriant forest of the cafetal, and they all entered 
upon a path that led through the superb tropical growth. The trees 
were fairly swathed with orchids, and gigantic creepers united then- 
branches in a tangled and fantastic network. The ground was car- 
peted with exquisite ferns, and the coffee trees that had been planted 
all around gave no aspect of cultivation to the scene. They had an 

257 



258 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 



overawed and juvenile air as they grew slenderly in the shade of 
their huge forest brothers. The pleasant rushing music of falling 
water grew more distinct as they advanced. They descended 
cautiously a steep slope, that was slippery with the moist and heavy 
black soil. At its foot they came to the edge of the stream and 
paused in awe-struck ecstasy at the spectacle before them. They 
stood on an irregular shelf of rock and below was a large pool 
of a marvelous azure hue. Facing them a cliff rose from the water 
in an uneven wall, its front tapestried with a dense matting of 
ferns and moss. Over this vines were gracefully festooned, and the 

rich green surface was starred with 
brilliant flowers. The cliff was 
crowned with a heavy bank of glossy- 
leaved trees. A large water-fall 
came tumbling into the pool at one 
end, intensifying the luminous azure 
of the water with the contrast of its 
snowy foam. All over the face of 
the cliff there came tinkling down a 
shower of fine streams, making a lace-like aqueous embroidery over 
the background of velvety green. 

The mineral held in solution by the trickling water had united 
with the sponge-like mass of the roots of shrubs and plants and had 
formed smooth, sloping projections of a strange-looking stony sub- 
stance, brownish in hue, that was both mineral and vegetable in 
composition. Over the irregular, ragged edges of these grotto-like 
roofs the fine streams came pouring. It was the mineral contained in 
the water that gave it its bluish color, and such water is known in 




THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 259 

Mexico by the specific name of agua azul, or "blue water." 

" Fairyland ! Enchantment ! This realizes the magic of those 
words ! I would never have dreamed that the world could anywhere 
show a spectacle of such exquisite beauty as this ! " murmured Mabel, 
after they had contemplated the scene in silence for several minutes. 

" And the music of the water ! " said Mrs. Brinkley, after an- 
other pause. " The cadence seems like that of a never-ending 
symphony ! The delicate treble of those fine descending liquid 
lines makes a constant accompaniment to the full deep song of the 
cascade. We can fancy them the strings of a harp, swept by the 
hand of nature." 

" But where is the bridge ? " asked Harry. 

" Just before us," said Mr. McCotter. " But we cannot see 
where the water flows under it, so this pool appears to be land- 
locked." 

The young men followed Mr. McCotter's guidance across the 
bridge, while Mr. Brinkley remained behind with the ladies. Mabel 
had brought her water-colors and she seated herself near the edge 
of the pool to make a sketch of the scene. 

A roundabout way took the young men down to the stream 
below the bridge, and they were soon in the water, which they found 
of the same delicious temperature and satiny touch as in the Choy 
cave. Wading through swift rapids, against which they could 
hardly make their way the current was so strong, they found a deep 
still place above. The water had the same sustaining power, also, 
that they had observed in the Choy cave. In the rocky wall rising 
out of the calm blueness of the stream there yawned the dark mouth of a 
cavern, and directly into its tunnel-like space they swam. Some birds 



260 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

above them raised a shrill protest at their intrusion, and their noise made 
the mild gloom of the place seem a trifle uncanny. Suddenly a soft, 
mysterious bluish twilight began to diffuse itself through the ob- 
scurity. Then, almost before they had time to think whence might 
proceed so strange a dawning, they found themselves laved by a 
luminous flood ; all around them and beneath them the crystalline 
water was filled with an intense azure radiance, like that of some 
wondrous jewel that steadily glows with its own light. The light 
proceeded from below, and it seemed as if they were floating in the 
ambient ether of limitless space. To Harry it was the most wonder- 
ful sensation of his life, and for the moment he felt as if he had 
suddenly been removed far from this world and had entered into the 
wholly new experience of another existence. " If 1 should really 
die I wonder if it would seem anything like this ! " was the thought 
that passed through his mind. 

" Que milagro ! " said Pablo, who was swimming at his side, 
speaking softly ; " Somos como los angeles flotando en el cielo ! " — 
" What a miracle ! We are like the angels, floating in the sky ! " 

" In heaven, yes ! and there is the portal ! " said Eliot. 

Indeed, as they turned a corner where the irregular angle of the 
rock made a dark, uneven line sharply distinct down into the heaven- 
like depths, the noble opening of a great arch revealed itself before 
them. It was the arch of the Bridge of God, submerged in the 
water, and hidden on the side where they had first come upon the 
stream. It was through this arch that there poured into the cavern 
all that flood of wondrous light, proceeding from the pool above. 

" The Puente de Dios ! Rightly is it named, giving entrance 
into this heaven ! " said Ignacio. 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 261 

Along the sides of the cavern the irregular walls presented be- 
neath the surface convenient shelves here and there, where they 
could stand and rest, with the water up to their necks. In the wall 
just above the arch, and a little to one side, above the surface of the water 
there was an opening that made a convenient window looking out upon 
the fairy pool. Harry peered through this, and saw Mabel sitting 
on the bank opposite, engrossed in her sketching. Mr. and Mrs. 
Brinkley and Florence were resting on the rocks towards the cas- 
cade, looking on at the scene as if they could never get their fill of 
its beauty. " Just look out of this window, Nacho ! " said Harry, 
as the young Mexican came swimming up. And, as Ignacio's face 
appeared at the opening, Harry mischievously called " Hoo-hoo ! " 
from over his shoulder, in a bird-like tone. As Mabel looked up 
and recognized the apparition in pleased surprise, Ignacio drew back 
in dislnay, and Harry laughed : " Don't be afraid, Nacho ! She can 
only see your face ! " 

On their way back through the cafetal Eliot said : " What won- 
derful experiences those two have been : The Choy cave and the 
Puente de Dios. In the Choy cave we went far back into the ages 
of dim antiquity and descended to live for two hours among the shades 
of the Grecian underworld. The Bridge of God has carried us for- 
ward, and given us two hours of celestial paradise ! " 

When the train had started, and they were all enjoying again the 
wonderful scenery of the ascent to the Tamasopo, Harry exclaimed : 
" I wonder if there were any snakes in those woods ! " 

" Mercy ! I wonder if there were ! " cried Florence, with a sort 
of retrospective terror in her tone. " The idea never entered my 
head ! If it had, I might have been frightened half to death. But 
I didn't see a living creature, except the birds." 



262 THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 

" I've only seen one snake in Mexico," said Harry. " And one 
scorpion, but not a centipede or a tarantula. I don't think there is 
much to be afraid of in the venemous things of the tropics, after 

all ! " 

" We have been remarkably free from startling adventures for a 
long voyage like ours," said Mr. Brinkley. 

« Yes — " said Eliot ; " Let me see — The most exciting thing 
was that runaway engine. Then Sam got scared by an alligator, 
and we all came near seeing a live tiger, and Harry and Pablo helped 
kill a snake. That's all ! " 

The next morning they were in San Luis Potosi. Here Ignacio 
and Pablo were to leave them, returning to the capital by way of 
the Mexican National Railroad. For they had planned to stop over 
at Dolores Hidalgo, the Mexican Mount Vernon, to see the home 
and the relics of the father of their country. It was at Dolores that 
Kidalgo, the patriot priest, gave the signal for the struggle for the 
independence of Mexico. As the time approached for parting, 
Harry almost laughed to see the downcast look that Ignacio wore. 
^^ Come in here a minute, Nacho ! " he called from the dining-room 
doorway. 

Ignacio followed, and Harry, taking him to the sofa of his berth, 
mysteriously drew the curtains and said : " Look here, old boy, you 
are looking so blue I thought I might cheer you up a bit ! Here is 
something I found among Mabel's sketches." 

As Ignacio' s glance fell upon the watercolor that Harry held be- 
fore him his eyes opened wide, a happy light came into them, and 
his lips parted in a joyous smile. Mabel's sketch was one she had 
made the day before at the Puente de Dios. Its subject was that 



THE CRUISE OF A LAND-YACHT. 263 

window looking out from the cavern upon the fairy pool. Framed 
by ferns and half curtained by drooping vines, Ignacio was con- 
fronted by his own brown, handsome face, his large dark eyes peer- 
ing out like those of a young faun, and the thick clusters of his 
blue-black hair hanging low over his forehead, wet from the plunge 
from which he had just risen. 

" She must carry somebody's looks pretty closely in mind to be 
able to do a portrait like that from memory ! " remarked Harry, 
with significant stress. 

" Truly the Bridge of God has borne me into heaven ! " Ignacio 
murmured. 

It was a happy face that the young Mexican wore when he and 
Pablo stepped out upon the station platform just before the Ariadne 
moved away. And Mabel's face also became radiant as he said, 
with an expressive look, " When Pablo goes North to school, he will 
travel in my care." 

" We shall all be delighted to welcome you," said Mr. Brinkley, 
and the response that Ignacio read in Mabel's eyes told him that 
there was one from whom a particularly cordial reception might be 
looked for. 

" Good bye ! " 

" Hasta la vista ! " 

And the train started. 

That night, as they were speeding northward beyond the tropics 
Harry called from his pillow across to his companion : " Say Eliot ! 
It looks as if you were going to have a Mexican brother-in-law ! " 

" So it does ! And Nacho is a splendid fellow ! " 

" Haven't we had a good time, though ? " 










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